Functional ecology's non-selectionist understanding of function

Two Notions of Ecological Function

“…Related issues are whether communities and ecosystems may legitimately be regarded as functionally organized entities or systems and the extent to which our understanding of their functional organization should be based in evolution. Proponents of the consensus view also differ over whether their accounts are focused on communities (Maclaurin and Sterelny 2008;Lean 2020), or on ecosystems (Odenbaugh 2010;Nunes-Neto, Moreno, and El-Hani 2014;Dussault and Bouchard 2017;Dussault 2018).…”

“…They are not concerned with whether eucalypts' flammability and starfish's predation on mussels are selected effects, but with whether those effects have been selected for their contributions to the overall behavior of the eucalypts' ecosystem and the maintenance of diversity, respectively. Nunes-Neto et al ( 2014), Dussault and Bouchard (2017), and Dussault's (2018) general focus on the use of the function concept to denote the contributions of biodiversity items (e.g., traits, populations, functional groups) to ecosystem-level processes, also makes clear that their rejection of selected-effects ecological functions concerns functions as contributions to the capacities or activities of a higher-level system (i.e., 3b).…”

“…6.2;Odenbaugh 2010, sec. 3;Nunes-Neto, Moreno, and El-Hani 2014;Dussault and Bouchard 2017;Dussault 2018;Lean 2020). Despite the novelty of the topic, philosophers who have contributed to it seem to have reached an "implicit consensus" (see Nunes-Neto, Moreno, and El-Hani 2014, 124;Dussault 2018, 2-3).…”

Functions and Functioning in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and in Ecology

“…An immediate worry arises for this suggestion; Dussault and Bouchard (2017) and Dussault (2018) suggest that there are roles ("use" or "service" roles) played by organisms within communities that are not the product of selection (or evolution). For example, a rabbit can be used as food by a fox even if the rabbit has not evolved to be food for a fox or the fox evolved to control rabbit populations.…”

“…Antoine Dussault (2018) questions premise #3, saying that it is an empirical question and that the empirical question remains unsettled. I'm inclined to agree with that, but I think premise #2 is also questionable -that is, it is questionable that selection must be on communities (or ecosystems) to make sense of SE functions in ecology.…”