Six personas to adopt when framing theoretical research questions in biology.

Abstract

Theory is a critical component of the biological research process, and complements observational and experimental approaches. However, most biologists receive little training on how to frame a theoretical question and, thus, how to evaluate when theory has successfully answered the research question. Here, we develop a guide with six verbal framings for theoretical models in biology. These correspond to different personas one might adopt as a theorist: 'Advocate', 'Explainer', 'Instigator', 'Mediator', 'Semantician' and 'Tinkerer'. These personas are drawn from combinations of two starting points (pattern or mechanism) and three foci (novelty, robustness or conflict). We illustrate each of these framings with examples of specific theoretical questions, by drawing on recent theoretical papers in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. We show how the same research topic can be approached from slightly different perspectives, using different framings. We show how clarifying a model's framing can debunk common misconceptions of theory: that simplifying assumptions are bad, more detail is always better, models show anything you want and modelling requires substantial maths knowledge. Finally, we provide a roadmap that researchers new to theoretical research can use to identify a framing to serve as a blueprint for their own theoretical research projects.