Complex Landscapes, Big Thinking, and Insects—Agroecology, an Evolving Field: The Established Researcher

Abstract

When I started my Ph.D. in 1981, ecology as a biological discipline in Germany was in its infancy and still stuck in traditional ecophysiology, faunistics/floristics, and phytosociology approaches. While my enthusiasm for insects and, in particular, parasitic wasps had been aroused by inspiring university teachers, I found the interactions between organisms and their resources to be much more interesting and key to understanding ecosystem functioning than sheer estimates of patterns in species richness and distribution. Organisms’ lives are not independent of their biotic and abiotic environment, but are interwoven with many parts of their habitat, which determines ecological functions. That is why I started reading the book, “Insect Ecology” by Peter W. Price, together with my Ph.D. colleague Stefan Vidal. As we went carefully through all the pages and chapters, we were introduced to a new world of building and testing ecological hypotheses related to the functional role of biodiversity and the complexity of multitrophic interactions. Peter and his colleagues wrote a seminal paper on “Interactions among three trophic levels: influence of plants on interactions between insect herbivores and natural enemies” (Price et al. 1980), which embodied the main focus of his work on tritrophic plant–herbivore–predator/parasitoid interactions and greatly influenced my choice to study Phragmites-consuming gall midges and their rich parasitoid complex for my doctoral thesis. I was particularly interested in how trophic interactions are shaped by plant growth and other insects in Phragmites stands. Later, I expanded my studies to include the trophic interactions of insect communities of 10 additional grass species, following Price's method of using comparative approaches. Unfortunately, both my doctoral thesis in 1986, and later my habilitation, an independent peer-reviewed postdoctoral thesis in 1992, were written as monographs in German. At that time, writing in German was expected by the university and German was the language for professional meetings in ecology or entomology. As a result, publishing in English was very unusual for German ecologists in the 1980s (and still in the 1990s), due to not only language problems but also a simple lack of experience with the scientific writing style. This is why most of this research has been never recognized internationally. Starting in 1993, I got the chance to establish my agroecology laboratory with a new focus on how landscape structure affects local patterns and processes. However, all doctoral theses were still written in German, but since 2000, theses are composed of a series of chapters or manuscripts in English. Colleagues outside of Germany are now aware of our work. Many smart colleagues have influenced my research, which has shifted during my career from sociology to biology, from faunistics to multitrophic interactions, from a local to the landscape perspective, from temperate to tropical ecology, and from pure ecology to socioeconomic-ecological trade-offs. My approach to science has been most influenced by Peter Price and his hypotheses-driven view of how to best understand complex interactions. In 1993, I met him for the first time during a challenging Trans-Siberian Railway trip to a gall maker conference in eastern Siberia. I realized then that he is not only a keen thinker, but also has a most hospitable, entertaining, open-minded, and sympathetic personality.