Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- To a mouse
- Chapter 1 The road ahead
- Chapter 2 Patterns in space
- Chapter 3 Patterns in time
- Chapter 4 Dimensionless patterns
- Chapter 5 Speciation
- Chapter 6 Extinction
- Chapter 7 Coevolution of habitat diversity and species diversity
- Chapter 8 Species–area curves: the classical patterns
- Chapter 9 Species–area curves: large issues
- Chapter 10 Paleobiological patterns
- Chapter 11 Other patterns with dynamic roots
- Chapter 12 Energy flow and diversity
- Chapter 13 Diversity dynamics: a hierarchical puzzle
- References
- Index
Chapter 13 - Diversity dynamics: a hierarchical puzzle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- To a mouse
- Chapter 1 The road ahead
- Chapter 2 Patterns in space
- Chapter 3 Patterns in time
- Chapter 4 Dimensionless patterns
- Chapter 5 Speciation
- Chapter 6 Extinction
- Chapter 7 Coevolution of habitat diversity and species diversity
- Chapter 8 Species–area curves: the classical patterns
- Chapter 9 Species–area curves: large issues
- Chapter 10 Paleobiological patterns
- Chapter 11 Other patterns with dynamic roots
- Chapter 12 Energy flow and diversity
- Chapter 13 Diversity dynamics: a hierarchical puzzle
- References
- Index
Summary
My friend, Arthur Shapiro, sanely wary of ecological theory, took a look at the first 12 chapters of this book and pronounced them somewhat unfulfilling. Where is the grand theory that unites everything? Are ecological theoreticians forever doomed to jury-rigging a bit of a theory for this question and another for that? Isn't there a single equation of which all the rest are special cases? Although Art wasn't quite that harsh, that's the essence of his complaint.
As Art himself is aware (Shapiro, 1993), some scientists like to solve puzzles and some to build systems. Puzzle solvers joyfully arrange the bits in their puzzle box until they get a satisfying picture. Then they move to another box, until it too looks like it is finished. Or they fill out paper squares with letters/numbers that satisfy the rules of another sort of puzzle. Or they organize scraps of sheet metal, odd bolts, and snarled springs until they have built a contraption that – pick one – flies, hulls Brazilnuts, or supplies the energy of fusion to people all over the world.
System builders, on the other hand, want a machine into which they can pour the unsorted bits and have them emerge effortlessly as a completed puzzle or gadget.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Species Diversity in Space and Time , pp. 373 - 384Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995