The Aims and Structures of Ecological Research Programs

Abstract

Neutral Theory is controversial in ecology. Ecologists and philosophers have diagnosed the source of the controversy as: its false assumption that individuals in different species within the same trophic level are ecologically equivalent, its conflict with Competition Theory and the adaptation of species, its role as a null hypothesis, and as a Lakatosian research programme. In this paper, I show why we should instead understand the conflict at the level of research programs which involve more than theory. The Neutralist and Competitionist research programs borrow and construct theories, models, and experiments for various aims and given their home ecological systems. I present a holistic and pragmatic view of the controversy that foregrounds the interrelation between many kinds of practices and decisions in ecological research.

Neutral and niche theory in community ecology: a framework for comparing model realism

“…There are additional routes to pluralism. For example, William Bausman has characterized competitionism and neutralism as research programs with somewhat different starting questions, key study systems, and methodological approaches (Bausman 2019), and has argued for methodological pluralism within community ecology (Bausman 2022).…”

“…Instead, my analysis suggests that community ecologists ought to continue working with a plurality of theories in order to represent different facets of communities. Niche and neutral theories should be seen as complementary rather than as competing frameworks (or research programs: see Bausman 2019). Although theoretical unification may ultimately be possible, the persistence of multiple complementary models should be treated as the expected outcome, not as a failure.…”

The future of ecological research will not be (fully) automated

“…In the framework of Lakatos (1978), although we can argue that ecology has component theories, we do not have a hard core of central theses, nor do we have a sequence of components theories mapping a research program; instead, some competing theories (e.g. competition v. neutralism) can be read as research programs (Bausman 2019), without lending more generality to the field as a whole. In parallel, the mathematical foundations of the field, that would allow generalization, are mostly disconnected both from one another and from empirical data (Lean 2019).…”

The Role of Starting Points to Order Investigation: Why and How to Enrich the Logic of Research Questions

“…Granting their strong Lakatosianism (which both Lloyd's and this paper implicitly challenge),Ale (2019) and colleagues crucially misidentify the "hard core" of the neutrality program as neutrality and their argument for neutralism being a degenerate program fails because of it. SeeBausman (2019) for the extended version of this argument.6 The history of neutral theorizing and modeling in ecology is complicated and somewhat controversial. In brief,Caswell (1976) imported neutral models from evolution.…”