I have been reading the various answers with great interest, trying to form an opinion. Now that I have started writing, I hope my “opinion” does not turn into a rant, and my apologies if you see it as such.

 I agree, that the inclusion of human activity is a must in ecological studies these days. The study of social-ecological systems was (re)born from this need.

 Where are we going with ecological research? I would like to pose a number of questions to answer that...

How much of our ecological research is put into actual practice to improve conservation, environmental management etc.? Research grant applications may require a statement of how important the research is in practice, but how many of us actually publish our findings in a “farmer's weekly”? Farmers in Africa and Australia (and probably all over the world) are the primary owners / managers of the land. How well do we inform them? Universities don't give much credit to such “popular” publication. You need to publish in journals with the highest possible ISI rating – generally read by other academics and post-graduates who can afford the subscription (undergraduates just copy and paste the contents but don't read it). The openAccess policies that are being implemented now may help with the dissemination of information. All we need to do then is to get the farmers to read such journal articles in the hope that they understand our jargon… Until then, many of us are doing research because it's fun – in my case this is probably even more true, as I am not working in my field at the moment. I do research in my spare time.

 How many long-term ecological studies do we see? With much of our research done by post-graduates we are looking generally at 2yrs for an M.Sc. and 3yr for a PhD – maybe double that for part-time students. Students and/or universities are penalised for taking much longer than that. What are six years (-1 year for project proposal, analysis and write-up) for a forestry ecological study? Or in an arid system where the rainfall regimes dictate outcomes? Working with a series of post-docs? How many agencies are prepared to fund 50yr studies in ecology? Will you start a project (like the foresters of old) that you will never see the end of? Space-for-time approaches can only be taken so far… Do we have the leisure / time to do long-term studies? Ecological problems generally need a fast management response … make that “...fast, appropriate management response”.

Basically I see our research as part of a system that follows the instant everything approach – instant messages, fast food, instant pudding - but sadly a “just add water” approach will not work in ecological studies (no pun intended for arid systems ecologists). Universities are required to “perform” but we can't agree on how to measure performance in the first place. As a result, we have taken money as an easy indicator (grants received, student fees and government support per student etc) so we are now focussing on counting beans rather than on … whatever it is that we are supposed to focus on.

That might be topic of another RG question?

 So in answer to the original question… at the moment we seem to be building up an enormous knowledge base that needs to be tapped a lot more.

Regards to you all,

PS - Dr. in forest management 2005, 14 years of teaching and research.

My favourite answer to this is that the long term consequence of the sum of all ecological processes is evolution. Hence any study of ecology has significance in terms of understanding not only the smaller scale dynamics of selected systems but also the broader scale consequences in terms of the evolutionary outcomes.

We have some big challenges in today's world not least of which is biodiversity conservation and effective ecosystems management - failure to understand ecological process today will inevitably change the future not just in how these systems work but ultimately in how they evolve; Ultimately, if we fail to understand the ecology then this will have consequences for the very nature of the species that survive us.

Carola Meierrose, Associate Professor (1995), University of Evora, Portugal, retired since 2013/8

After a long period (which is not yet over) of collection and describing single species for, lets say, some sort of telephone list (many persons, no action) ecological studies aim to understand the interactions between species in their environment, triggered by climate factors. Without those studies we won't understand the functioning of the biosphere, nor will we appreciate the endless mistakes we commit interfering in Nature without having understood the consequences. One "old" example is the general misuse of pesticides (quote Raquel Carson) which also goes on, because the interest of pharmaceutical industry and the lack of knowledge of agricultural producers are not ready to understand and thus respect the immense importance of e.g. arthropods in the ecosystems. Those power much of life on Earth, as tiny as they are. They are a very important link between the primary producers and the consumers of higher levels. It is not "by chance" that half of the known biodiversity are arthropods and especially insects. We can assume that every single living species occupies an important role in the food chain, even if we did not yet discover where and why. Ecological studies are very time consuming and don't lead very quickly to publications, the only "valid" measure" for the "quality" of researchers and thus their funding. That makes that ecological studies are not really attractive for the young who "escape" to many other also interesting research goals. In my opinion, ecological studies are fundamental for our survival on Earth on the medium and long run, as we totally depend on Nature, but mankind thinks we can manage Nature in our economic sense. 

Ecology is (or at least was born as) a branch of biology. As such, ecology aims to understand the phenomenon of life. What characterizes ecology with respect to other biological sciences is that it focuses on organizational levels ranging from the whole organism (autoecology) to upper levels (population, community, ecosystem and landscape). Additional characteristic is that the ecological spatial scale is generally smaller than that of closely related fields like biogeography, while the ecological time scale is often narrower than those of neighbour fields like evolution. Most ecological research focuses on patterns and interactions across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. However, ecology is new and holistic, so it is diversifying at relatively fast rate compared with most scientific domains.

Ecology is a 150 years old scientific discipline aiming to study relationships between organisms and between organisms and their environment. Due to the complexity of living systems, this is achieved by studying community structure and ecosystem functioning but also by looking at single components such as interactions between Individuals. Although, Ecology was originally intended as a basic scientific discipline, ecologists soon realized the pervasive role of humans in ecological systems. As a result, ecology developed into a multidisciplinary discipline encompassing theoretical and applied aspects alike. In that process, sustainability turned out to be a fundamental principle. We are a yet exponentially growing species in a fragile interaction web on which we so critically depend. The preservation of the bases of life is without doubt the ultimate objective of ecology.

(Postdoc, PhD in 2014)

My view may be somewhat simplistic, but simple things often contain a message that is easy to comprehend and to dispute. There are almost no pristine systems left on earth and "naturalness" is difficult to define. Nevertheless, traditional ecological studies seek to investigate natural systems unaffected by humans. Obviously, the effects of human disturbance as an important part of ecosystem dynamics. This may sound trivial, but consider this:. forest ecologists often study "natural" tree growth and recruitment. More interesting and relevant may the study of harvest events on ecosystem structure and dynamics. What do you say ?

Dear Rob,

After a lifelong work in oceans and small lakes and rivers, I like to say:

Insight to ecological processes meaning changes in environment or more precisely:

Shifts and turnover of materials.

For a certain ecosystem, i. e. a lake, I ask how much material enters a sink or is resolved or lost by harvest.

In my practice, I face the question what is happening in a lake after the stocking of plankivorous fish, since the owner, the administration of the swim facility ask me for management possibilities. I answer him that some ichthyoeutrophication may occur and I have to admit that our knowledge about the mechanisms of the increase of phosphorus concentrations following the stocking with planktivorous roach is quite low. I look back and remember Peters, “A critique for ecology” as an admonition on the bad state of ecology as science.

Again my question: how to get correlations between the stocking of planktivores and nutrient concentrations? The administration does want to receive advices for management. I have to look for better methods in my investigations in order to solve a fundamental problem in ecology. I question the available methods for filtrating lake water and for sampling zooplankton.

I received my PhD in 1979. At that time, there were still academic teachers who could cover limnology as science. Today, I have to return to such a pretension in order to fill my tasks as a freelancer ecologist. So, I have to cover sediments, lake physics, water chemistry, planktology, and fisheries.

Regards,

Albert

Over time my view has increasingly been that the original greek meaning (something like "study of the house") is pretty spot on. The ultimate goal of ecology is to figure out how we as a species, homo sapiens, persist, in this our home. If we don't figure that out, we will not persist, ecology as a study will no longer exist, and in a million years, the home we were studying will be going strong once again in our absence. I think the romantic notion of ecology for many is the 19th century naturalist, observing, drawing, out in the field with notebook and binoculars and magnifying glass. There is certainly a place for that kind of work, and it is absolutely necessary to understand the whole, but if we don't include people in the equation, we're just doing it for fun. And that's fine. Its knowledge for knowledge's sake which is no less or more noble than the artist or the writer. But if we're asking, where does ecology go as a discipline, or what's the goal we're trying to achieve as ecologists, then I think its getting a good enough understanding of the Earth as a system, to perpetuate our ability to study the Earth as a system. 

I got my PhD in 2002.  

Like Klaus Gadow, my view of ecology is also simplistic, but at the same time I agree with most answers above. I think the great aim of ecologists is being able to effectively predict ecological patterns and processes in different scales (spatial, temporal, taxonomical, organizational...). This is similar what happened with one of the most advanced scientific fields nowadays: phisics. At the same time, I see that ecology is moving away from social sciences, the narrative description of isolated parts (the species description like a telephone list as Carola Meierrose said). Well, this is my view about the direction which ecology is moving.

Matheus Ribeiro, Professor at Universidade Federal de Goiás - Brasil, Doctor in Ecology and Evolution (2013).

To go for a sustainable planet

Damn! That's one deep question! 

Science is always done for one purpose - to know how stuff works. 

Even though as you say in your question each research group has its own interest, in my opinion, nowadays, it is not possible to understand any environment without considering human impact on it. Presently, in general, Latin America is affected by dengue and zika (today disturbing and alarming all the planet) and Argentina, in particular, by the occurrence of new rivers in the most productive area of the country, both situations probably linked to deforestation (Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay are considered as the most deforested countries in the world).  

Summing up, this global ecological change that includes not only the climate requires a new way of thinking the ecosystems in particular and the Ecology in general.

Stella Bogino, Professor University of San Luis, Argentina. PhD graduation 2008.  

Live exists as a complex system of living and non-lving parts.  Ecology is the study of how life works. Undestanding this system has conservation applications, but that is certainly not the only, or even the primary, reason for the dicipline.

Good point Stella

I see ecology as a series of biological and physical inter-relationships that we had better understand if we and other species are to continue to exist and evolve on Earth.

Ecology is perhaps our last hope that the human life will persist forever on earth, Ecology should guide us to use the earth resources wisely and for a longer possible period, 

Good answer Sean Haughian. My point-of-view is too similar.

If I were asked to use a words to describe “life”, without hesitation I would use the word “Change”.  Although I will try to get back to this idea at the end, I will start simply by defining what a “community” in Ecology is. 

A “community” is composed by a series of interacting populations in a given space and time. Normally, we study communities by listing the various species that make up that assemblage, we determine their abundances, and try to infer their importance. On a more dynamic perspective, we identify and group species by “functional guilds”, that can provide a better idea on the way those communities might work in terms of energy fluxes and use of resources. We also make use of mathematical indexes to decide what communities are more or less “diverse” (whatever this term might mean), and how similar they are. However, any of those attempts to describe and understand a given community, could be compared to a snapshot of reality. For a long time, a central question in community ecology has related to the ways processes shape species assemblages. What are those processes?  How do they work?  

In order to study and understand ecological systems, ecologists have made use of artificial-controlled “lab” systems that can be manipulated to understand the mechanisms involved in its functioning. Another approach they have used is the selection of simple natural systems to study their components under natural conditions. This is how many of the basic processes at the population and community levels have been described. Individuals within populations, as well as among populations interact in various ways.  

We now know that within populations, population structure (age groups, sex ratios in sexually reproducing species, and hierarchy in social species), as well as those intraspecific interactions (like competition and “altruism”, for example), are essential in understanding their prevalence in time. Those populations are also subjected to environmental factors that can modify temporarily their abundances, and exist under density-dependent constraints.  

If we think about a community composed by a series of dynamic populations, those very basic processes apply as well. Any individual (irrespective of animal, plant, or whatever living organism we can think of), requires energy to live, and that energy will be obtained somehow from sunlight, from ingesting plant or animal materials, or decomposing materials that become available (reintegrating those materials to the environment). This is how trophic interactions are established, and (according to some ideas on community structure) the amount of energy available could be a limiting factor in the extension (the number of species) or complexity of those food chains. Other processes are also very important, such as diverse types of interactions (competition, predation, parasitism, mutualism, etc), and the successional processes promoted by natural or induced changes, on the other extreme of the spectrum.

 Despite of the knowledge we have gained so far on the mechanisms and factors governing the structure of communities, most of our understanding comes from short-term studies performed at small (local) scales. This knowledge has its own limitations and particularities, and cannot be applied in general to every ecological system on earth. That very fact limits our chances to make predictions about how a specific community in a given place will respond to environmental changes, because the particular details and the key processes might naturally change in time, modifying the composition and dynamics of particular systems. It is basically a matter of “Spatial Scale”.

 When we consider larger spatial scales, we for sure can be aware of the fact that habitats can be highly heterogeneous, and habitat heterogeneity can play a very important role in community dynamics. Patchiness can affect dispersal patterns and stability of interactions at local scales. For example, when we think of a “metapopulation”, some of the subpopulations disperse and colonize new patches, meanwhile others might go extinct. At the same time, self-sustaining populations can act as sources for the maintenance of “satellite” subpopulations occupying less favorable patches.

 This is the same basic idea MacArthur and Wilson had when they proposed their “Equilibrium of Island Biogeography Theory”. They stated that a community can be the result of the equilibrium reached after repeated events of colonization and extinction, and the number of species present in an island will depend on its size (as a proxy for habitat heterogeneity), and distance from the source area (that affects the probability and frequency of colonization). Although this model was criticized by its simplicity, their concept has been explored and extended considering that in many senses, environments could be heterogeneous, and “islands” of a given habitat can be immersed within a different matrix of other habitat type(s).

 If we accept this idea of a “dynamic equilibrium”, probably we are aware of the fact that it will be very difficult (and maybe we will not be able in strict terms) to establish definite ways to predict general patterns on long-term dynamics of ecological communities. We will need also to have a better understanding on the qualitative and quantitative changes of communities over time, as well as the intensity and nature of the interactions among the individuals and species belonging to those communities.

 How all these ideas relate to Conservation?  Human induced changes in ecological systems have caused impressive decreases in the numbers of many plants and animals, and we have witnessed an increase in the extinction rates for many other groups; that trend does not seem to be improving so far. Conservation Biology intends to find ways to decrease the negative effects of human impacts on biological species.

 Unfortunately unwise and uninformed management decisions have promoted for a long time habitat fragmentation and degradation, the disruption of ecological processes, and the simplification of natural communities. Our life style is indirectly promoting climatic changes that have modified (and will continue) the large scale patterns of weather, and we can see now that catastrophic events are happening with increased frequency. (Effects can have very different scales!!)

 -          Why it is so difficult to maintain ecological systems under the effects of human induced factors? 

-          Why many conservation programs have failed in their attempts to save or maintain viable natural populations of endangered species?

-          Why some habitats cannot be restored as easily as we thought? 

 One answer to these questions is basically that every system is unique, and we do not know enough about them. In conservation, we cannot think in applying “canned-recipes”… (although our best informed decisions and scientific knowledge available could be very important). 

 The “uniqueness” of each system is basically the result of the composition of the community, the dynamic changes in the numbers of individuals involved, the types and intensity of the interactions established at intraspecific, as well as interspecific levels, and the effects the environment can impose on them. For sure, we need to have a better understanding on the processes and the important factors affecting those ecological communities to implement management measures for their conservation.

 Historically, natural communities are the consequence of long term adjustments and changes, mediated by natural selection (Evolution means “Change”). Populations interact dynamically, being affected and affecting other populations with which they are linked to within communities. I really think that we can have a generalized idea on the driving processes shaping ecological communities; however, their importance at the local level in particular systems has to be determined in one by one basis.

 Diversity is part of life, and that diversity can be found among the individuals of a species, as well as among populations, communities, and among the dynamic natural processes involved.

 I have been reading the various answers with great interest, trying to form an opinion. Now that I have started writing, I hope my “opinion” does not turn into a rant, and my apologies if you see it as such.

 I agree, that the inclusion of human activity is a must in ecological studies these days. The study of social-ecological systems was (re)born from this need.

 Where are we going with ecological research? I would like to pose a number of questions to answer that...

How much of our ecological research is put into actual practice to improve conservation, environmental management etc.? Research grant applications may require a statement of how important the research is in practice, but how many of us actually publish our findings in a “farmer's weekly”? Farmers in Africa and Australia (and probably all over the world) are the primary owners / managers of the land. How well do we inform them? Universities don't give much credit to such “popular” publication. You need to publish in journals with the highest possible ISI rating – generally read by other academics and post-graduates who can afford the subscription (undergraduates just copy and paste the contents but don't read it). The openAccess policies that are being implemented now may help with the dissemination of information. All we need to do then is to get the farmers to read such journal articles in the hope that they understand our jargon… Until then, many of us are doing research because it's fun – in my case this is probably even more true, as I am not working in my field at the moment. I do research in my spare time.

 How many long-term ecological studies do we see? With much of our research done by post-graduates we are looking generally at 2yrs for an M.Sc. and 3yr for a PhD – maybe double that for part-time students. Students and/or universities are penalised for taking much longer than that. What are six years (-1 year for project proposal, analysis and write-up) for a forestry ecological study? Or in an arid system where the rainfall regimes dictate outcomes? Working with a series of post-docs? How many agencies are prepared to fund 50yr studies in ecology? Will you start a project (like the foresters of old) that you will never see the end of? Space-for-time approaches can only be taken so far… Do we have the leisure / time to do long-term studies? Ecological problems generally need a fast management response … make that “...fast, appropriate management response”.

Basically I see our research as part of a system that follows the instant everything approach – instant messages, fast food, instant pudding - but sadly a “just add water” approach will not work in ecological studies (no pun intended for arid systems ecologists). Universities are required to “perform” but we can't agree on how to measure performance in the first place. As a result, we have taken money as an easy indicator (grants received, student fees and government support per student etc) so we are now focussing on counting beans rather than on … whatever it is that we are supposed to focus on.

That might be topic of another RG question?

 So in answer to the original question… at the moment we seem to be building up an enormous knowledge base that needs to be tapped a lot more.

Regards to you all,

PS - Dr. in forest management 2005, 14 years of teaching and research.

I haven´t time to read all of the great answers but here is a publication  I really like when it was new. hope it helps 

best 

Identification of 100 fundamental ecological questions (see link below)

Article Identification of 100 Fundamental Ecological Questions

Great question, thank you Rob!

my take on it: if you consider everything that involves growing or harvesting food or other natural goods in/from the environment (e.g., agriculture, forestry, angling, hunting) as a form of "applied ecology" (which I think is reasonable) it becomes clear that ecology is essential for our surviving. the more we know the better we will be able to survive in the long run. of course this does not imply that all the knowledge that is produced by ecologists and scientists in related fields will be directly useful for our survival - quite the contrary - but as it is not possible to foresee innovations that will be made 10, 50, or 200 years from now only time will tell which parts of the knowledge that we produce will lead to groundbreaking new insights.

Dear Friedrich, I enjoyed your "rant" :-) very much and find it very pertinent. I would expect many data sets older than 20 to 30 years to be gathering dust in archives.

Off topic but maybe of interest to you: There are moves to retrieve these but that costs time and money. One such for African tropical forests is "jungle rhythms"  http://junglerhythms.org/    Researchers pushing out to citizen scientists to help transcribe old long term data sets. Not sexy but very noble.

Wonderful question and answers.

While their are many practical and important applications to ecologists' work, we must never forget the fundamental reason why we signed up to study ecology after high school: because we have a passion for the natural world and an insatiable curiosity about how it works.

Ecology is an infinitely complex field with multiple interacting variables at every temporal and spatial scale. And that is what makes it both fascinating and frustrating. The feeling of "unlocking" a secret, or some empirical law, is one of triumph and relief.

If we narrow our motivations down to some grand, applied goal, then we are in risk of exhaustion, because that goal will always be elusive. Compare it to the goal of eradicating poverty or conflict. Those are noble but unobtainable goals and we will always have to compromise with more realistic goals like "halving poverty by year X". The same thing applies to applied ecology - "saving X% of biodiversity"; "minimising environmental degradation" or other, equally depressing, goals.

So the primary goal of ecology is, I think, to understand. Understand the flows of energy, the patterns of change and flux in systems at scales ranging from global to square millimeters. To understand the relationships between species and their environment, between individuals of a species, between different species. To understand evolutionary processes and drivers at geological and human timescales.

The secondary goal of ecology is then to use that knowledge, born out of passion and curiosity for nature, to advise people on how best to manage their natural resources. To build predictive models that can be used to weigh up the costs and benefits of management or policy decisions.

A classic example of this would be the state-and-transition models developed for rangeland management in the US. The initial ideas were born from curiosity and the growing conviction in the 70s and 80s that contemporary understanding of rangeland dynamics was missing something (particularly driven by the droughts in the Sahel). Out of that came the disequilibrium paradigm of rangeland ecology, which lead to a simple and practical set of tools for managers and policy makers to make better-informed decisions about their natural resources. But the original spark of inspiration came from a group of people who were, first and foremost, naturalists with boots on the ground, an incredible knowledge of the systems in which they were working, and a realisation that there were pieces missing from the puzzle. They weren't trying to "solve" a problem, they were trying to better understand a system - and that understanding lead to a whole new approach to solving problems.

And finally, the third goal of ecology, as Friedrich said, is to communicate that complexity and passion to the general public in ways that are accessible, meaningful and inspiring. I've been doing a lot of reading about science communication; most writers seem to agree that the public is far less interested in "practical" science than in "awe-inspiring" science - in other words, the same thing that inspired us to become ecologists in the first place. We often make the mistake of releasing some small solution to some problem, rather than just sharing the amazing beauty and complexity of natural systems. People respond to beauty.

EDIT. MSc in Grassland science (2010), freelance consultant

This discussion is truly useful. I agree that most us came to ecology first of all for quenching our curiosity about nature. And as Alan Short reminds us, we should keep that curiosity fuels the rest of the process whether the results out of the curiosity lead to applied ecology or problem solving. I came across the attached publication and I hope it might help balance the discussion especially for those thinking we should be more and more doing applied Ecology.

MSc in Ecology

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0169534714002444/1-s2.0-S0169534714002444-main.pdf?_tid=77501ae0-d0ad-11e5-99d8-00000aacb362&acdnat=1455188095_a99efbd57f01c53ce76417cf46db1099

I presume: "conservation". Conservation of that habitats and species that for us are so interesting; it's so good to answer to questions and find solutions to problems that stimulate our curiosity, but  i presume would be nice to preserve what we study now for future generations. The change of perspective over a topic is a never ending-story, which is why we need to preserve what we like to observe.

Expecially if conscious of the current global species loss.

Graduated student in Natural sciences, Torino, 2012