Ecolog:
Resetarits makes some excellent points.
While I quite understand the resistance to using such "terms" as "squishy,"
I was trying to make a between-the-lines point: The term needs to match the
phenomenon.
Any term should meet the test of relevance and clarity, and everyone should
recognize that "everything is context." Post-oaks, for example, worked as a
term in my childhood because "everybody" "knew" what post-oak meant. "Native
to Texas" is true, too, provided that the reader has the sense to know that
that means that post-oaks occur within the political boundaries known as
Texas. Exceptions, as necessary, should be noted by the writer where
necessary, and by the reader, with the exception that a more elaborate
explanation is necessary by the writer if the reader does not understand
that the statement does not mean that post-oak is ONLY native to Texas.
We should hear from the original poster regarding whether or not the
original question has received relevant responses. I personally found the
question vague, and therefore suspicious. But it did awaken some thoughts
that should prove useful--IF there is follow-up to a conclusion, however
conditioned and provisional.
WT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Resetarits, William" <william.resetar...@ttu.edu>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology terminology Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of
"native"
Ecology has long been, and continues to be, terminologically challenged.
16 years ago several of us (Fauth et al. 1996) made what we felt was a
valiant attempt to bring some clarity to a set of terms that would seem to
lend themselves to a degree of precision, or at least clear functional
definition, and that had existing definitions in the literature. These
included such staples as community, guild, ensemble, etc. The initial
impetus for this was our observation that the term "community," a rather
central term in ecology, was being essentially used to describe "the stuff
I am studying, " rather than anything truly definable. So, we had "bird
communities", "bat communities", "zooplankton communities," "larval
anuran communities", and things like "benthic fish communities,"
"herbivore communities" and "pollinator communities," etc. etc.
Obviously, NONE of these amalgams met any existing definition of
community, but they did fit definitions of guild, assemblage, ensembl!
e, etc. We thought, well, this should be easy enough to fix! Just lay
it out clearly, in a logical structure, using existing definitions, and
voila! The idea was picked up by John Lawton and has also appeared in
several texts, but has to a large extent fallen on deaf ears. Why?? Go
ask Alice - people DO apparently want a word to mean "just what I choose
for it to mean - no more, no less."
So, 16 years later, an admittedly brief, unscientific, nonrandom survey of
titles in ecology journals actually surprised me a bit, in that the
ubiquitous use of the term "community" seems to be somewhat reduced in
favor of more precise terms such as assemblage, or more detailed
descriptors of what people are actually working on. Nonetheless, many of
the old favorites are alive and well, "mammalian communities," "seabird
communities," "herbivore communities" and of course "plant communities,"
to mention but a few. Change comes slowly, if at all.
My point in the current context is that words matter, and precise
definitions for words used in science matter even more. The concepts may
indeed be fuzzy (post oak itself is a construct based on one or many
definitions of species - communities may or may not exist as discrete
entities), but when two people use the word "species" or "community" or
"native" in an ecological context it should mean the same thing, or
involve sufficient modifiers to make the differences in usage clear. If
the word cannot be strictly defined or a definition agreed upon, then we
must follow Ian's advice and use whatever combination of words necessary
to make ourselves and our information clear. The statements "brook trout
are native to North America" and "brook trout are native to Eastern North
America" are both true, I would think, under any reasonable definition of
native. One is simply more precise (and hence has less potential to
mislead). In reality the terms "native" and "non-native,"!
by their very nature, have no real meaning without some further
historical context and it is this historical context that informs
conservation and restoration.
On 3/16/12 10:48 PM, "Ian Ramjohn" <ramjo...@msu.edu> wrote:
I think we're missing the point here. The problem isn't with the
definitions of native - it's an English word that's always going to
have a range of meanings. In other words - it's a poor term for science.
"Is post oak native to Texas?" is a less than ideal question, because
the answer is binary - yes, or no. If you're really going to answer
that question - as a scientist - you'd say that (some or all) of Texas
lies within the (pre-settlement, historical, or whatever term you want
to define) range of the species _based_on_[certain]_data_. With the
obvious caveats, in the case of the US and Canada, that species ranges
reflect ongoing migration since the end of the last ice age. Or, "no,
data suggest that TX is outside the native range of the species".
Fighting over semantics or values is pointless. If the term is
"squishy", let's use more precise terminology, and be explicit about
the uncertainty. Unless you're speaking to politicians, in which case
you need to find a way to somehow convey an amount of certainty that
can't be misconstrued, while still being nuanced enough that they
can't (easily) turn what you say around to try to discredit you. And
even then, the media will simply what you say, and the THOSE words
will be used to discredit you.
Quoting Wayne Tyson <landr...@cox.net>:
Honorable Forum:
Anybody who has any "sense" knows that words are imperfect, and
anybody who has read "Alice in Wonderland" (or was it "Through the
Looking Glass?" I just don't remember) knows that a word means "just
what I (or the Red Queen?) say it means." Words are communication
tools, and for them to work at perfect pitch, the parties to the
communication have to understand and mean exactly the same thing,
especially if it is to be considered "scientific."
Ecology is a "squishy" subject, so it follows that there may even
NEED to be a certain amount of "squish" in its terms. It has
apparently endless variables that are in a constant state of change.
So ecologist simply have to come to common agreement what "native"
means (and does not mean). Izzat "ad populem?"
WT
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Pierce" <mindi...@gmail.com>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] definition of "native"
While the definition you provide might be a suitable working definition,
it
is not a suitable scientific definition. As a counter-example to your
claim "it
was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved there or migrated
there prior to human record keeping" there are species that the first
humans brought to North America; these species violate the either-or
construction of your definition because we don't even 'know' all of the
species that came to North America this way.
To further push the envelope, what about species that were moved around
by
other hominids (*Homo habilis, H. erectus*) or neandertals? Are they
native
because they weren't moved by *H. sapiens*? Or are the non-native because
they were moved by agents?
What about species that were introduced by humans and then evolved into
new
species? Is the introduced species non-native, but the evolutionary
descendant is native? Appeals to the crowd (*argument ad populum*) do not
invalidate these critiques and neither do *ad hominem *attacks.
Finally, the point that 'native' is a definition that eludes us still
stands. While local and pragmatic definitions of it might exist, a
global,
scientifically defensible definition of it does not exist.
Andrew D. Pierce, Ph.D
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management
University of Hawai'i
USFS-Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry
On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 4:42 PM, David L. McNeely <mcnee...@cox.net>
wrote:
well, you can make word games out of simple concepts if you wish to.
Whenever most sane people refer to a species as being native in a place,
they mean it was not taken there by human agency, but either evolved
there
or migrated there prior to human record keeping. Pretty simple. The
other
constructs you mention complicate matters, yes, but they do not define
the
concept of a species being native to a locality. The multiple maps of
native range for ponderosa pine may be based on different data sets, or
they may be based on different definitions of the species. Those
matters
do not alter what is meant by a species being native in a location, they
just illustrate that we don't always have all the information, or that
sometimes we disagree on the data.
mcneely
---- Matt Chew <anek...@gmail.com> wrote:
Jason Persichetti's contention, "we all know what is meant by the
idiom"
is
precisely false.
I routinely show audiences eight different maps purporting to represent
the
native range of _Pinus_ponderosa_, prepared for different purposes by
different authorities. They can't all be correct AND mean the same
thing.
What "native species" denotes actually varies quite a bit, and no >
wonder,
since it includes three explicit degrees of freedom (specifications of
place, time, and taxon) at least two tacit ones (who counts as a human,
and
what counts as human agency) plus an authority claim.
Authority claims alone entail ad hoc redefinitions of "native"; e.g.,
USGS
NAS roils the waters by calling _Micropterus_salmoides_ a "native
transplant" in the United States outside a particular set of hydrologic
units. That is a political calculation.
What "native species" connotes also varies, but recently, typically
indicates the idiomist is making or ratifying a judgment that some
organism
has a moral claim to persisting in a specified place because no human
is
known to have physically moved it - or its forbears. But we relax
various
aspects of that as easily as we apply them.
As is (remarkably) typical of ecology's idioms, we have no calibrated
conception of this supposedly fundamental characteristic. Blaming the
shortcomings of language for our failure to formulate a coherent
concept
is
a red herring unless our consensus "native" really is an inarticulable
intuition. If it is (and nothing I've read so far suggests otherwise)
there's nothing to calibrate, much less recalibrate, and we're not
doing
science.
Matthew K Chew
Assistant Research Professor
Arizona State University School of Life Sciences
ASU Center for Biology & Society
PO Box 873301
Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA
Tel 480.965.8422
Fax 480.965.8330
mc...@asu.edu or anek...@gmail.com
http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php
http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
--
David McNeely
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