February 18, 2011
by peter.taylor
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Contention motivating this taxonomizing: Research as well as the application of knowledge resulting from research are untroubled by heterogeneity to the extent that populations are well controlled. Such control can only be established and maintained with considerable effort or social … Continue reading
February 16, 2011
by peter.taylor
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The history of ideas about nature can be read in terms of the social order being defended or promoted — see previous posts. This post presents a schema of Raymond Williams’s history of changing and conflicting ideas about nature and … Continue reading
December 14, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Through her basic and applied research, sociologist Denise Lach illuminates a wide range of environment and resource issues (including water, forest, fish, and bioremediation), from an unusually rich combination of angles, with dissemination to a range of outlets and audiences … Continue reading
December 12, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Cultural anthropologists Schwarz and Thompson (1990, 4-6) use diagrams to illustrate four worldviews concerning nature and the effect society can have on it (Fig. 1). This classification and the cultural (“grid-group”) theory that underlies it have been widely invoked in … Continue reading
December 11, 2010
by peter.taylor
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The previous post presented a case of apparent predator-prey interactions among ciliate species one might have expected to be competitors. There are many references to apparent interactions or indirect effects in the ecological literature (e.g., Levine 1976; Holt 1977; Lawlor … Continue reading
December 10, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Vandermeer (1969) reported on a quantitative study of a community of four competing ciliate protozoan populations. The model he fitted to his observations (see previous post) indicated that three of the six pairs of interactions between the competitors were positive-negative … Continue reading
December 9, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Ecology is the study of complex interactions. But what, exactly, is an ecological interaction? This and the following posts will indicate that our intuition can be misleading. When I see the Great Blue Heron standing still near the edge of … Continue reading
December 5, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Multivariate statistical (or data analytic) techniques have long been descriptively used, especially in vegetation ecology, to cluster ecological sites into distinct communities (classification) or position them along continuous axes (ordination). The patterns exposed have also been used to generate hypotheses … Continue reading
December 4, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Constructionist and landscape views (Taylor 2005, Chapter 1, Part A) reinforce other currents that have undermined the aspirations of earlier decades for identifying general principles about systems and communities (Kingsland 1995, 213-251; Taylor and Haila 2001). Since the 1980s ecologists … Continue reading
December 3, 2010
by peter.taylor
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?A broad distinction can be made between community ecology, which emphasizes population sizes and inter-species interactions, and systems ecology, which emphasizes nutrient and energy flows between compartments (Hagen 1989). Nevertheless, community ecological theory also involves systems in the sense of … Continue reading