Mapping ecology
| 7 April, 2011 | Richard P. Grant |
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If you’ve been keeping up with us on Facebook and Twitter, you might have seen a discussion on the concept of ecosystem-based fishery management, which includes a dissent from Nando Boero and response from the original evaluator, Chris Kennedy.
You’ll be familiar with Nando of course from Naturally Selected itself, of course: he comments freely and alerted me to the wonders of Ray Troll. Nando is Professor of Zoology and teaches Marine Biology, in an experimental two year Masters, in English, in Coastal and Marine Biology & Ecology at the Università del Salento.
The students surprised Nando in their exam, by producing this rather marvellous conceptual map of ecology (click through for the website):
You can click on any of the terms and get a description. “It is far from being perfect (there are lots of mistakes, and editors will be horrified),” Nando says, “but it has been done by undergraduates and it shows links among different domains of ecology that are not so apparent in standard textbooks. So, they used their brains, [and] they had a lot of fun doing it.” He points out that texts and scientific literature are usually incredibly boring, but his students were surprised how much fun a course could be.
The map does need some refinement, but it’s a start, and I look forward to seeing the completed version.
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This concept map simplifies a reality, makes understanding of it like deterministic, predictable in principle ….
But as a start point for student it’s OK.
The model does not clearly capture the major linkage between the regeneration of nutrients during the process of decomposition (right-hand side) and the role of nutrients (left-hand side). I think a new line between the process (decomposition) and the pool (nutrients) would capture this circularity. Have you considered modelling this in a graphical programme like Stella [http://www.iseesystems.com/softwares/Education/StellaSoftware.aspx]?
Thanks for your feedback. I’ll make sure Nando sees it so he can pass it on to the students who created the map.
Thanks a lot. I am perfectly aware that the map is not perfect. For instance, the term Migration is misplaced if applied to aliens, since migration implies a back and forth movement. Almost every word is debatable. And every concept. And arrow. Evidently the decomposition arrow is wrong! By the way, in many papers “biodiversity” is just a dozen species, and “ecosystem functioning” is just their production. I hope other comments and corrections will arrive, and I thank the readers of this blog for their inputs. My students passed their exam already, but I am sure they will continue to work at their map, improving the web site. As for predicting the future… well, Nick, I do not think it gives this idea. The map shows that the variables are innumerable, the links among them are even more, and so the future is inherently unpredictable. But we can understand the processes and patterns that will lead to it.
The future does not exist… It will exist when it will happen, and it will not be the future anymore. So, discussing about the future is talking about something that does not exist. BUT we can discuss about what is happening now, what it happened in the past, and we can understand. This will help having an idea of possible scenarios, and there are many alternative ones. So, no! the map is not intended to show that the future is predictable, it is intended to show exactly the opposite.