Martin and Ecolog:
I have often suggested this ("everything changes") as a law too (but not
necessarily or primarily restricted to "over time"), but in perhaps less
polite terms (I call it the "s__t happens" law). It may difficult to get
either version widely accepted, but I think you are quite right that we
suggest "the obvious," especially when it appears that it is truly being
ignored.
I tend to agree with the rest of your suggestions too, except I would like
to hear a bit more elaboration on the "tropic efficiency" one. And while I
do not disagree with "species evolve over time" I have a little (or a lot)
of trouble with it if it means that time is the primary driver of species
evolution.
WT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Meiss" <mme...@gmail.com>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOGY Fundamentals Principles Laws Other
Here are some ecological "laws" to consider:
The main one is "Everything changes over time." This can probably be
derived from thermodynamic principles: entropy, and all that.
Here are some corollaries of this law:
The physical environment changes over time.
Species diversity changes over time.
Gene frequencies change over time.
Species evolve over time.
Maybe we can even assign direction to some changing factors:
Trophic efficiency INCREASES over time.
Resource availability DECREASES over time.
The total number of species that has ever existed INCREASES over time.
Maybe some of our common observations could be formulated as laws:
The tropics have higher species diversity then polar regions.
Island populations reflect the populations of nearby continents.
There will always be diseases.
There will always be parasites.
There will always be predators and prey.
There will always be primary producers.
Is this what you were getting at?
Martin M. Meiss
2010/11/4 Bill Silvert <cien...@silvert.org>
"discipline" ? Ecology suffers from too much concern with philosophy and
not enough science.
Consider Gauss' Competitive Exclusion Principle. It is very useful,
provides a guide to identifying the niche of an organism, but it has been
identified as tautological by the late Rob Peters so we aren't supposed
to
use it.
Lawrence Slobodkin used to complain about theorists invoking principles
like conservation of energy as if that were optional for living
creatures.
Basically the answer to Wayne's question is that if ecologists come up
with
something useful that might serve as a law or principle, then it would be
drowned out by claims that it was not rigorous enough. We worry too much
about being "scientific" and not enough about learning how things work.
Bill Silvert
-----Original Message----- From: Wayne Tyson
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 2:39 AM
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOGY Fundamentals Principles Laws Other
Ecolog:
In recent years the debate about Laws of Ecology has been re-heated.* If
the study of the interactions of living organisms with environments is to
have discipline, it seems to me that it should have produced some
observations about how things work or function that, when applied, never
fail to prove valid. Can such observations, rendered as statements or
equations, be termed "laws" or "principles," or?
WT
*For example, see
http://philosophy.unc.edu/people/faculty/marc-lange/Oikosfile.pdf
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