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Opposing paradigms: regulation or limitation of populations?
Author(s) -
White T. C. R.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
oikos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.672
H-Index - 179
eISSN - 1600-0706
pISSN - 0030-1299
DOI - 10.1034/j.1600-0706.2001.930116.x
Subject(s) - white (mutation) , citation , library science , ecology , geography , genealogy , sociology , history , biology , computer science , genetics , gene
The history of the regulation controversy was succinctly summarised by Turchin (1995). Wolda (1995) suggested that the argument should be buried and forgotten. Like Murray (1999), however, I do not think it will go away. After some sixty years there is still no widespread evidence that populations are regulated. Yet, in the face of much evidence that they are not (White 1993, Den Boer and Reddingius 1996), many ecologists hold the belief that populations must be regulated, and continue to seek evidence for this. But there seems little point in continuing the search for real mortality factors that may be responsible for the statistical regulation and density dependence found in sets of data derived from counts of animals in the field. Instead, the whole matter needs to be reassessed for what it is – a clash of opposing paradigms. Den Boer and Reddingius (1996) say that different paradigms are incompatible and change will occur only by ‘‘revolution’’: it needs a new generation of young scientists to make the change. My purpose in this paper is to call upon young ecologists to bring about such a revolution – to reassess today’s ecological dogma that animals are regulated by mortality factors acting directly upon them. To do so they must think anew about what they observe in nature: that the abundance of animals is passively limited by the inability of the environment to support them all. And recognise that it is the resultant struggle to survive in this hostile and inadequate world which generates the ferocious interand intra-specific interactions that ecologists observe. These interactions are responsible for the evolution of life as it is today, but they do not regulate its abundance. I ask young ecologists to make a ‘‘paradigm shift’’ (Wilson 1994) early in their career. The longer anyone remains steeped in a particular paradigm, the more difficult a shift becomes. You come to believe it is true and do not want to be convinced otherwise. Ultimately, to abandon a paradigm is to abandon a life’s work; a life’s reputation. Not something readily done!