Theoretical approaches to ecology

Abstract

Discussion of theoretical ecology, like discussion of ecology generally, is plagued by the problem of determining what it is in order to ascertain how it got that way or even what it should be. Consideration of theoretical ecology is difficult in that it requires conceptions of what is theory, what is ecology, and how they combine. Some recent writers on theoretical ecology resolved the problems I suggest with disarming simplicity. E. G. Leigh, Jr. (1968), for example, opened an article with a “historical sketch of ecologic theory,” moving directly to the “pioneers of mathematical ecology, Lotka and Volterra,” the founders in the 1920s of the “Golden Age of theoretical ecology” as it was described by Scudo and Ziegler (1978). Robert May (1974a), the editor of the first book, entitled simply Theoretical Ecology ( May 1976) offered a similar history, but overlooked Lotka in writing, “Theoretical ecology got off to a good start in the 1920s with Vito Volterra's seminal and still central contributions.” This view of the alliance of mathematical theory and ecology had been described earlier in the volume Theoretical and Mathematical Biology (Waterman and Morowitz 1965): “There are few areas of biology where theoretical mathematical studies have had as much impact as they have had in ecology” (Morowitz 1965). The author of a volume entitled An Introduction to Mathematical Ecology wrote, “Ecology is essentially a mathematical subject” (Pielou 1969:v). Mathematical theory was described as the big advance in ecology over Elton's conceptual contributions to ecology (Christiansen and Fenchel 1977).