On the Very Idea of an Ecosystem

Odenbaugh, Jay

doi:10.1057/9780230297425_13

Cited by 18 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…Les principales rencontrent des difficultés spécifiques dans leur application au cas des fonctions écologiques. Odenbaugh 5 adopte la conception systémique de Cummins 6 , ce qui le conduit à sous-déterminer la classe des fonctions écologiquespar exemple, il attribue des fonctions écologiques aux volcans et aux éclairs, ce qu'aucun écologue ne fait. L'autre principale conception des fonctions biologiques, la conception étiologique-sélective de Neander 7 , doit quant à elle souscrire à l'hypothèse controversée d'une sélection naturelle opérant sur les écosystèmes.…”

Section: Les éCosystèmes En Tant Que Fins Naturellesunclassified

Doctorales 2016

2017

philonsorbonne

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Section: Les éCosystèmes En Tant Que Fins Naturellesunclassified

Doctorales 2016

2017

philonsorbonne

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“…For 4 example, questions about ecological community structure and how it is maintained have 5 been argued about for over a hundred years. These questions are still taking their 6 current principle divisions from camps first staked out by Clements [1] and Gleason [2] 7 in the early decades of the 20th Century: Are communities assembled non-randomly, 8 conditioned on certain possibilities of co-occurrence and structured by general ecological 9 regularities, or are they more randomly constructed entities brought together by a 10 complex combination of abiotic factors, available species pools, competition, and other 11 ecological processes that suggest a strong element of contingency [3,4]?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, the following questions are still 24 being debated. Are they individuals [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]? Which ecological theories best describe the 25 dynamics of their structure, maintenance, and development [8,9,11,13,14]?…”

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confidence: 99%

Can constraint closure provide a generalized understanding of community dynamics in ecosystems?

Peck

Heiss

2020

Preprint

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Since the inception of the discipline, understanding causal complexity in ecological communities has been a challenge. Here we draw insights from recent work on constraint closure that suggests ways of grappling with ecological complexity that yield generalizable theoretical insights. Using a set of evolutionary constraints on species flow through ecological communities, which include: selection, species drift, dispersal, and speciation, combined with multispecies interactions such as mutualistic interactions, and abiotic constraints, we demonstrate how constraint closure allows communities to emerge as semi-autonomous structures. Through agent-based modeling, we articulate ways that ecological pattern formation, viewed through the lens of constraint closure, informs questions about stability and turnover in community ecology. 12Currently, there does not seem to be a unified body of theory and practice that 13 explains most features of community structure. The hunt for generality has also been 14 fraught (See (Elliott-Graves Manuscript in Review) for a detailed overview). Theories in 15 the discipline often seem a piecemeal confederation of contingent ideas that carve nature 16 mid-bone, as it were, often focused on specific natural systems that provide only limited 17 empirical and theoretical support among other differently structured ecological 18 communities. It is clear that the theoretical constructions used by ecologists have been 19 crucially instrumental in the development of research programs and have allowed 20 progress in understanding community ecology. However, even basic concepts in the 21 discipline are often viewed differently by different research groups that are often divided 22March 10, 2020 1/20 into different camps, often to the point that there are even debates about the usefulness 23 of the concept of community ecology. For example, the following questions are still 24 being debated. Are they individuals [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]? Which ecological theories best describe the 25 dynamics of their structure, maintenance, and development [8,9,11,13,14]? Do they 26 have boundaries [5,15]? Are they stable [16]? How are communities assembled, and are 27 they so contingent that each community must be examined as an individual case 28 study [17][18][19][20][21][22][23]? Are ecosystems even real entities [24,25]? 29These questions are all interrelated, yet the abundant theories used to tame and 30 understand these ecological systems rarely provide a unified or coherent picture among 31 theories. Moreover, in order to make progress in the idea of an ecological community, it 32 seems essential to discover generalities that hold across the numerous possible biotic 33 configurations that comprise these individual community assemblages. It is also 34 important to view this project from multiple perspectives in order to tackle the inherent 35 complexity and provide a unified or coherent picture among theories for a more unified 36 conception of community ecology. There have been many attempts to...

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“…The discussion of the ecological function concept presented in this chapter will therefore reinforce the near consensus that has recently emerged among philosophers of biology and ecology, according to which the ecological function concept should be elucidated along the lines of non-selectionist alternatives to the selected effect theory of function (Maclaurin and Sterelny 2008, sec. 6.2;Odenbaugh 2010;Gayon 2013;Nunes-Neto et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…14.4, I will briefly discuss two non-selectionist accounts of ecological functions that have recently been proposed by philosophers of biology and ecology; namely, the causal role account (Maclaurin and Sterelny 2008, sec. 6.2;Odenbaugh 2010;Gayon 2013), and the organizational account (Nunes-Neto et al 2014). I will maintain that neither of these two accounts fully accords with how ecological functions are understood in functional ecology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional Biodiversity and the Concept of Ecological Function

Dussault

2019

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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This chapter argues that the common claim that the ascription of ecological functions to organisms in functional ecology raises issues about levels of natural selection is ill-founded. This claim, I maintain, mistakenly assumes that the function concept as understood in functional ecology aligns with the selected effect theory of function advocated by many philosophers of biology (sometimes called "The Standard Line" on functions). After exploring the implications of Wilson and Sober's defence of multilevel selection for the prospects of defending a selected effect account of ecological functions, I identify three main ways in which functional ecology's understanding of the function concept diverges from the selected effect theory. Specifically, I argue (1) that functional ecology conceives ecological functions as context-based rather than history-based properties of organisms; (2) that it attributes to the ecological function concept the aim of explaining ecosystem processes rather than that of explaining the presence of organisms within ecosystems; and (3) that it conceives the ecological functions of organisms as use and service functions rather than design functions. I then discuss the extent to which the recently proposed causal role and organizational accounts of ecological functions better accord with the purposes for which the function concept is used in functional ecology.

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On the Very Idea of an Ecosystem

Cited by 18 publications

References 12 publications

Doctorales 2016

Doctorales 2016

Can constraint closure provide a generalized understanding of community dynamics in ecosystems?

Functional Biodiversity and the Concept of Ecological Function

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