Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T17:01:28.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Indexically Structured Ecological Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Christopher Hunter Lean
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ecological communities are seldom, if ever, biological individuals. They lack causal boundaries as the populations that constitute communities are not congruent and rarely have persistent functional roles regulating the communities’ higher-level properties. Instead we should represent ecological communities indexically, by identifying ecological communities via the network of weak causal interactions between populations that unfurl from a starting set of populations. This precisification of ecological communities helps identify how community properties remain invariant, and why they have robust characteristics. This respects the diversity and aggregational nature of these complex systems while still vindicating them as units worthy of investigation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 501 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†.

Thanks to Justin Bruner, Carl Brusse, John Matthewson, Roberta Millstein, Jay Odenbaugh, Ron Planer, Kim Sterelny, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this article.

References

Bryant, Rachael. 2010. “What If Ecological Communities Are Not Wholes?” In The Environment: Philosophy, Science, and Ethics, ed. Kabasenche, W., Oourke, M., and Slater, M. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chase, Jonathan M., Biro, Elizabeth G., Ryberg, Wade A., and Smith, Kevin G. 2009. “Predators Temper the Relative Importance of Stochastic Processes in the Assembly of Prey Metacommunities.” Ecology Letters 12 (11): 1210–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clarke, Ellen. 2013. “The Multiple Realizability of Biological Individuals.” Journal of Philosophy 110 (8): 413–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clements, Frederick E. 1916. Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colinvaux, Paul A. 2007. Amazon Expeditions: My Quest for the Ice-Age Equator. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Gregory J. 2003. The Science of the Struggle for Existence: On the Foundations of Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dornelas, Maria, Gotelli, Nicholas J., McGill, Brian, Shimadzu, Hideyasu, Moyes, Faye, Sievers, Caya, and Magurran, Anne E. 2014. “Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not Systematic Loss.” Science 344 (6181): 296–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drake, James A. 1990. “Communities as Assembled Structures: Do Rules Govern Pattern?” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 5 (5): 159–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunne, Jennifer A., and Williams, Richard J. 2009. “Cascading Extinctions and Community Collapse in Model Food Webs.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B: Biological Sciences 364 (1524): 1711–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eliot, Christopher. 2007. “Method and Metaphysics in Clements’s and Gleason’s Ecological Explanations.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, part C, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 85–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott-Graves, Alkistis. 2016. “The Problem of Prediction in Invasion Biology.” Biology and Philosophy 31 (3): 373–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Girvan, Michelle, and Newman, Mark E. J. 2002. “Community Structure in Social and Biological Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 (12): 7821–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gleason, Henry A. 1926. “The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association.” Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 7–26.Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2008. “Varieties of Population Structure and the Levels of Selection.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (1): 25–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbold, Bruce, and Moyle, Peter B. 1986. “Introduced Species and Vacant Niches.” American Naturalist 128 (5): 751–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, David L. 1976. “Are Species Really Individuals?” Systematic Biology 25 (2): 174–91.Google Scholar
Kerr, Benjamin, Riley, Margaret A., Feldman, Marcus W., and Bohannan, Brendan J. M. 2002. “Local Dispersal Promotes Biodiversity in a Real-Life Game of Rock-Paper-Scissors.” Nature 418 (6894): 171–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawton, John H. 1999. “Are There General Laws in Ecology?” Oikos 84 (2): 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lean, Christopher H., and Sterelny, Kim. 2016. “Ecological Hierarchy and Biodiversity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Biodiversity, ed. Garson, J., Plutynski, A., and Sarkar, S. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leibold, Mathew A., Holyoak, Marcel, Mouquet, Nicolas, Amarasekare, Priyanga, Chase, Jonathan M., Hoopes, Martha F., and Loreau, Michel. 2004. “The Metacommunity Concept: A Framework for Multi-scale Community Ecology.” Ecology Letters 7 (7): 601–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levins, Richard, and Lewontin, Richard C. 1985. The Dialectical Biologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levy, Arnon. 2014. “Machine-Likeness and Explanation by Decomposition.” Philosophers’ Imprint 14 (6).Google Scholar
Linquist, Stefan, Gregory, T. Ryan, Elliott, Tyler A., Saylor, Brent, Kremer, Stefan C., and Cottenie, Karl. 2016. “Yes! There Are Resilient Generalizations (or ‘Laws’) in Ecology.” Quarterly Review of Biology 91 (2): 119–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, Robert. 1955. “Fluctuations of Animal Populations and a Measure of Community Stability.” Ecology 36 (3): 533–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclaurin, James, and Sterelny, Kim. 2008. What Is Biodiversity? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthewson, John. 2011. “Trade-Offs in Model-Building: A More Target-Oriented Approach.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 42 (2): 324–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michel, Pascale, Lee, William G., During, Heinjo J., and Cornelissen, Johannes H. C. 2012. “Species Traits and Their Non-additive Interactions Control the Water Economy of Bryophyte Cushions.” Journal of Ecology 100 (1): 222–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, L. Scott, Soulé, Michael E., and Doak, Daniel F. 1993. “The Keystone-Species Concept in Ecology and Conservation.” BioScience 43 (4): 219–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millstein, Roberta L. 2009. “Populations as Individuals.” Biological Theory 4 (3): 267–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millstein, Roberta L. Forthcoming. “Is Aldo Leopold’s ‘Land Community’ an Individual?” In Individuation across Experimental and Theoretical Sciences, ed. O. Otávio Bueno, R. Chen, and M. Fagan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Morin, Peter J. 2011. Community Ecology. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mougi, Akihiko. 2016. “The Roles of Amensalistic and Commensalistic Interactions in Large Ecological Network Stability.” Scientific Reports 6 (July): 29929.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odenbaugh, Jay. 2007. “Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Realism about Communities and Ecosystems.” Philosophy of Science 74 (5): 628–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odenbaugh, Jay 2016. “Conservation Biology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, Edward N. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Paine, Robert T. 1992. “Food-Web Analysis through Field Measurement of per Capita Interaction Strength.” Nature 355:73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peck, Steven L. 2009. “Whose Boundary? An Individual Species Perspectival Approach to Borders.” Biological Theory 4 (3): 274–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricklefs, Robert E. 2005. “Phylogenetic Perspectives on Patterns of Regional and Local Species Richness.” In Tropical Rainforests: Past, Present, and Future, ed. Bermingham, E., Dick, C., and Moritz, C. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bermingham, E., Dick, C., and Moritz, C. 2008. “Disintegration of the Ecological Community.” American Naturalist 172 (6): 741–50.Google Scholar
Ripple, William J., Larsen, Eric J., Renkin, Roy A., and Smith, Douglas W. 2001. “Trophic Cascades among Wolves, Elk and Aspen on Yellowstone National Park’s Northern Range.” Biological Conservation 102 (3): 227–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roughgarden, Jonathan. 1989. “The Structure and Assembly of Communities.” In Perspectives in Ecological Theory, ed. Roughgarden, J., May, R., and Levin, S., 203–26. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simberloff, Daniel. 1982. “A Succession of Paradigms in Ecology: Essentialism to Materialism and Probabilism.” In Conceptual Issues in Ecology, ed. Saarinen, Esa, 63–99. Amsterdam: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soulé, Michael E. 1985. “What Is Conservation Biology? A New Synthetic Discipline Addresses the Dynamics and Problems of Perturbed Species, Communities, and Ecosystems.” BioScience 35 (11): 727–34.Google Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 2006. “Local Ecological Communities.” Philosophy of Science 73 (2): 215–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thuiller, Wilfried, Slingsby, Jasper A., Privett, Sean D. J., and Cowling, Richard M. 2007. “Stochastic Species Turnover and Stable Coexistence in a Species-Rich, Fire-Prone Plant Community.” PloS One 2 (9): e938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altena, Van, Cassandra, Richard van Logtestijn, Cornwell, William, and Cornelissen, Hans. 2012. “Species Composition and Fire: Non-additive Mixture Effects on Ground Fuel Flammability.” Frontiers in Plant Science 3:63.Google ScholarPubMed
Whittaker, Robert Harding. 1967. “Gradient Analysis of Vegetation.” Biological Reviews 42 (2): 207–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, J. Bastow, Agnew, Andrew D. Q., and Sykes, Martin. 2004. “Ecology or Mythology? Are Whittaker’s ‘Gradient Analysis’ Curves Reliable Evidence of Continuity in Vegetation?” Preslia 76 (3): 245–53.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, William C. 2007. Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James. 2005. Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, James 2016. “Causation and Manipulability.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, Edward N. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Yarrow, Matthew, and Marín, Victor H. 2007. “Toward Conceptual Cohesiveness: A Historical Analysis of the Theory and Utility of Ecological Boundaries and Transition Zones.” Ecosystems 10 (3): 462–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar