Against nature ? Why ecologists should not diverge from natural history
Abstract
A sort of dichotomy pervaded ecological studies in the last decades. On the one
hand, an important part of ecologists had the diffuse perception that the observational approach
of natural history had to fade away in favour of more formal experimental or modelling
approaches. Others, on the other hand, had an increasing perception that these formal approaches
were dismissing important cultural components of natural history that fed ecology since its
very beginning. We provide here a reconstruction of ecological thinking from natural history
arguing that the above mentioned schism between ’schools of thinking’ should be reconciled.
Modern ecology and natural history deserve reciprocal scientific respect and both seek understanding
nature, its components at different hierarchical levels (from species to ecosystems and
beyond) and the way it works. Ecology needs natural history to figure out meaningful scenarios,
select relevant variables and conceive meaningful hypotheses based on sound knowledge of
species up to ecosystems. Similarly, natural history needs more structured ecological thinking
for selecting appropriate experimental and/or quantitative approaches to ultimately move from
field insight to hypothesis testing.