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Article 1

Against nature ? Why ecologists should not diverge from natural history

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P. Guidetti1*, V. Parravicini2, C. Morri3, C. N. Bianchi3
1 Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, Faculté des Sciences, EA 4228 ECOMERS, 06108 Nice cedex 2, France
2 CRIOBE, USR 3278 CNRS-EPHE-UPVD, LABEX Corail, University of Perpignan, 66860 Perpignan, France
3 DiSTAV, University of Genoa, 16132 Genoa, Italy
* Corresponding author: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Abstract. – A sort of dichotomy pervaded ecological studies in the last decades. On the one hand, an important part of ecologists had the diffuse perception that the observational approach of natural history had to fade away in favour of more formal experimental or modelling approaches. Others, on the other hand, had an increasing perception that these formal approaches were dismissing important cultural components of natural history that fed ecology since its very beginning. We provide here a reconstruction of ecological thinking from natural history arguing that the above mentioned schism between ’schools of thinking’ should be reconciled. Modern ecology and natural history deserve reciprocal scientific respect and both seek understanding nature, its components at different hierarchical levels (from species to ecosystems and beyond) and the way it works. Ecology needs natural history to figure out meaningful scenarios, select relevant variables and conceive meaningful hypotheses based on sound knowledge of species up to ecosystems. Similarly, natural history needs more structured ecological thinking for selecting appropriate experimental and/or quantitative approaches to ultimately move from;field insight to hypothesis testing.

You are here: Volume 64 (2014) Issue Article 1
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