Evolutionary ecology of plant–plant interactions: an empirical modelling approach
Evolutionary ecology of plant–plant interactions: an empirical modelling approach.C. Damgaard 2004.
Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press.
26·95 (softback). 151 pp.
 |
Why did looters leave the books in Wal-Mart? |
|---|
 TOP Why did looters leave... LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
Let me begin this review with three short digressions. All address the value we place on books and literacy, and also, perhaps, the success with which we can transmit knowledge to future generations.
In autumn 2005, after Hurricane Katrina smashed south-eastern Louisiana and flooded the area around our home, we became house guests in a small Louisiana town. While we sweated through the heat and humidity, with no power and falling water pressure, we heard rumours of widespread looting in New Orleans. Allegedly, mobs were not only stripping stores of food and water (which was perhaps forgivable under the circumstances), they were also taking everything else, wading out the doors through the flood waters with new running shoes, televisions, guns and dresses. There was an element of black humour in all of this, however, because, according to our sources, one item was invariably left untouched – books.
Last autumn, a course in ‘Mass Communications’ follows my ‘General Ecology’ class at Southeastern Louisiana University. When the arriving mass communications students saw that I was requiring every student in my ecology class to read a book, they asked for my name. I was touched – until one of them explained, ‘I want your name so I can make damn sure I don't sign up for any of your courses’.
According to a recent survey of the National Endowment for the Arts (2004), Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, the proportion of American citizens who have read a book has fallen precipitously. In their words (p.vii), ‘literary reading in America is not only declining rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young’. Their data show that between 1992 and 2002 the number of Americans who have read any book has declined by 7 %, while the number who have read any literature has declined by 14%. The highest rate of decline is found in the youngest age classes.
I thought of attitudes towards reading and writing of books (and scholarly papers) as I wrestled with this review.
First, the bare facts. This slim volume offers seven chapters and four appendices on plant–plant interactions. Since the first chapter is an introduction, there are actually six chapters, titled: Individual Plant Growth; Demography; Interspecific Competition; Genetic Ecology; Natural Selection; and Evolution of Plant Life History.
Since there have been so many books, monographs and papers written about plant competition and plant–plant interactions in general, particularly over the past 50 years, I was curious about the author's intentions. How was he going to build on previous work, and what new insights had stimulated him to write a book? (Previous monographs, to name only a few, have included Practical plant ecology, Tansley, 1923; Plant competition, Clements et al., 1929; Quantitative and dynamic plant ecology, Kershaw, 1973; Mathematical ecology, Pielou, 1977; Population biology of plants, Harper, 1977; Plant strategies and vegetation processes, Grime, 1979; Resource competition and community structure, Tilman, 1982; and Competition, Keddy, 2001.) In the Preface, the author says ‘... there has been a strong tradition in plant ecology to describe different plant communities and succession processes in a qualitative way’ and refers to the ‘lack of communication between field ecologists and mathematical modelers’. The irony is that the first quote repeats almost word for word from A.G. Tansley, 1923 and J.L. Harper 1982 – neither of which is cited – and the author appears unaware of either their critiques or their suggested remedies. The proposal to promote communication actually struck me as insulting, since the remainder of the book is dismissive of plants and plant ecologists.
The introduction ignores most of the advances in the past thirty years. I recalled my days of graduate school in the 1970s in the library at Dalhousie University in Halifax, reading John Harper's essays such as ‘A Darwinian approach to plant ecology’ (Harper, 1967) and, later, ‘After description’ (Harper, 1982), as well as trying to work my way through E.C. Pielou's efforts to bring models into plant ecology (e.g. Pielou, 1975, 1977). But Damgaard's book is dated 2004. I flipped to the literature cited. As is typical of the book, there is only one reference to Harper, his encyclopedic Population biology of plants of 1977. Harper's fine book may be canonical (Keddy, 2005a), but the fact remains that, rather like the Bible, it is also conveniently long enough that it can be cited whether or not you have read it. Perhaps we should insist that authors cite the page and line references to indicate that they did more than scan the table of contents. The author might instead have read some original papers on plant–plant interactions (Harper, 1965) or demography (Harper and White, 1974), but did not. In spite of the homily about communication with mathematical modellers, there was no reference to any of E.C. Pielou's papers, let alone her books, all of which, I understood, had the express goal of bringing quantification and models into plant ecology.
Everywhere I tried to read, I found more of the same. I do not want to go through each chapter in the same way, and will further examine just the introduction and two other chapters where some striking issues arise. Consider the general treatment of models in the introduction. We are told there are two types: mechanistic and empirical. For the former, there was only a single paragraph in the introduction, and of the five cited references in this paragraph, Tilman, Pacala and Levin appear in four. I have written elsewhere (Keddy, 2004, 2005a, b) about how this small cadre has cultivated the illusion that no substantial models existed before their efforts. This book repeats the tale.
More surprising is the treatment of empirical models (page 15) – a treatment lacking any citations whatsover! I really do not understand why anyone would write about empirical models while ignoring the entire field. Where do I begin? I have written repeatedly about the value of empirical models (a few examples: Keddy, 1987, 2001, 2005b), drawing attention to earlier work by Rigler and Peters (Peters, 1992; Rigler, 1982; Rigler and Peters, 1995). Indeed, the word empiricism is even in the title of Rigler's paper. One can trace the origins of this approach back to philosophical roots in pragmatism (James, 1907), while reviews like Aune (1970) explore empiricism and pragmatism as tools, and newer books open the door to new realms of quantitative empirical inquiry (Shipley, 2000).
Chapter 2 addresses individual plant growth. Although the back cover warns that ‘the biological information underlying the discussed models is only briefly discussed’, I was still unprepared for the superficiality. The first section, strangely called ‘competitive growth’, introduces the idea that plants need resources and that they can negatively interact. The sole introduction to the literature in this field is a little-known book chapter by Begon. Apparently students need not read (Larcher, 2003), or (Levitt, 1980) or (Morowitz, 1968), nor be aware that all three used models. The figure that presumes to summarize competitive interactions refers to no other literature, and is marked ‘Figure provided by Jacob Weiner’. Several of the other examples in the book come from Professor Weiner. While it may have been kind of Jake to donate work to the project, might he not have suggested reading say, my own monograph (Keddy, 2001), which has a 71-page chapter (pp. 333–404) on models for competition, or work by other authors who have built and published models for plant–plant interactions [Pielou, Shugart, Givnish, . . .]? Given the importance of forests, the absence of the vast literature on models for plant–plant interactions in forests (e.g. Urban and Shugart, 1992; Shugart and Smith, 1996) is particularly noteworthy. Instead of trees, many examples use Arabidopsis.
Finally, consider the section on environmental gradients (two pages in Chapter 4, Interspecific competition) – a theme in my own work for some twenty years. Although the author cites a single, barely relevant paper on which I am first author, the rest of my gradient work is ignored. The book offers a model for plant competition along a gradient – but neglects to mention that E.C. Pielou built such a model thirty years ago (1975, pp. 90–99, ‘Modeling Competition on a Gradient’), even though that same model reappears in Competition (pp. 351–354). I considered re-reading Pielou's model to try to sort out how it compared to Damgaard's model, either with respect to objectives or mathematical structure, but decided that such comparisons were his job, not mine.
The last paragraph of the preface says that this book was first written as part of a doctoral thesis, and the author tells us that it is ‘a reflection of my own views rather than a balanced account of the field and the cited references are somewhat biased towards my own production’. Far from placating me, this just raised further questions about the book, not to mention the attitudes and standards of scholarship accepted by a committee, external examiner, university and publisher. Properly placing a contribution in the historical context of a discipline is absolutely essential for evaluating its significance and advancing the discipline.
Hence, this book, combined with the incidents mentioned at the beginning of this review, have made me reflect on current attitudes toward books and scholarship in general. We have all, of course, missed occasional important references in our published work, and as the number of journals increases, such errors will most likely continue. The challenge for younger scholars must be daunting. But surely that is no excuse for simply ignoring the field and making it up as you go along. Perhaps it is post-hurricane stress, from which it is said we are all still suffering – but what, I have been asking myself, is the difference between looters who ignore the books in a flooded Wal-Mart and writers who ignore the books in an air-conditioned university library? Do these both reflect the same trend uncovered by the National Endowment for the Arts? Such thoughts led me to a broader question, the difference, if any, between a person who is unable to read and a person who is simply unwilling to read.
Whether or not you agree with my ruminations on literacy, let me return to why this book, and others like it, merit concern. The knowledge we currently have about plants and plant communities has been painstakingly gained by the hard work of generations of committed scholars. Many have already died; more are now nearing retirement. They have left us their herbarium specimens, data, papers and books. This accumulated knowledge is already at risk from forces outside our field, such as increasing emphasis upon molecular biology, limited employment for plant systematists and field botanists, and lack of financial support or professional credit for collecting plants and maintaining herbaria (e.g. Held, 2004; Prather et al., 2004). My canonical list of readings in plant ecology (Keddy, 2005a) was motivated by the intention to counter some of these forces. Simultaneously, plants and their habitats are disappearing.
At best, new and superficial publications mislead students and erase history, while diluting the quality of our libraries (and increasing their costs). By weakening our discipline from within, they increase susceptibility to the external forces mentioned above. The threats to the disciplines of botany and plant ecology (e.g. Held, 2004; Prather et al., 2004) may be more significant than we realize. Two recent books (Russo, 2004; Wright, 2004) have used very different sources and arguments to come to a similar conclusion. Both authors suggest that we, as members of a culture that has seen enormous material progress, tend to assume that progress is inevitable and automatic – when in fact there are also historical precedents for rapid decline. We may not realize just how quickly the work of generations can be lost. Hence, the successful transmission of knowledge in botany and plant ecology to future generations (as in any other professional field) absolutely demands an attitude of respect for existing knowledge and for the people who produced it.
E-mail: pkeddy{at}selu.edu
|
LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
|
TOPWhy did looters leave...LITERATURE CITED |
|---|
-
Aune B. (1970) Rationalism, empiricism and pragmatism: an introduction(McGraw-Hill, Whitby, UK).
Clements FE, Weaver JE, Hanson HC. (1929) Plant competition(Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC).
Givnish TJ. (1982) On the adaptive significance of leaf height in forest herbs. The American Naturalist 120:353–381.[CrossRef]
Grime JP. (1979) Plant strategies and vegetation processes(John Wiley, Chichester, UK).
Harper JL. (1965) The nature and consequence of interference amongst plants. Genetics Today 2:465–482.
Harper JL. (1967) A Darwinian approach to plant ecology. Journal of Ecology 55:247–270.[CrossRef]
Harper JL. (1977) Population biology of plants(Academic Press, London).
Harper JL. (1982) After description. In Newman EI (Ed.). The plant community as a working mechanism(Blackwell Scientific Publishers, Oxford) pp. 11–25.
Harper JL and White J. (1974) The demography of plants. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 5:419–463.[CrossRef]
Held M. (2004) President's message: a personal view. Castanea 69:247.[CrossRef]
James W. (1907) Pragmatism. In Adler MJ (Ed.). Great books of the western world(Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago) 55: (1990), xv–xvii + 1–89.
Keddy PA. (1987) Beyond reductionism and scholasticism in plant community ecology. Vegetatio 69:209–211.[CrossRef]
Keddy PA. (2001) Competition 2nd edn (Kluwer, Dordrecht).
Keddy PA. (2004) Plants matter. The Quarterly Review of Biology 79:55–59 Review of The Ecology of Plants (by J.Gurevitch, S. Scheiner and G. A. Fox, 2002, Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA).[CrossRef]
Keddy PA. (2005a) Milestones in ecological thought—a canon for plant ecology. Invited Perspective. Journal of Vegetation Science 16:145–150.[CrossRef]
Keddy PA. (2005b) Putting the plants back into plant ecology: six pragmatic models for understanding and conserving plant diversity. Annals of Botany 95:1–13.
Kershaw KA. (1973) Quantitative and dynamic plant ecology 2nd edn (Edward Arnold, London).
Larcher W. (2003) Physiological plant ecology. Ecophysiology and stress physiology of functional groups 4th edn (Springer-Verlag, Berlin).
Levitt J. (1980) Responses of plants to environmental stresses 2nd edn (Academic Press, New York) I and II:.
Morowitz HJ. (1968) Energy flow in biology: biological organization as a problem in thermal physics(Academic Press, New York).
National Endowment for the Arts. (2004) Reading at risk: a survey of literary reading in America , Washington Research Division Report #46. available online at www.arts.gov.
Peters RH. (1992) A critique for ecology(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge).
Pielou EC. (1975) Ecological diversity(John Wiley and Sons, New York).
Pielou EC. (1977) Mathematical ecology(John Wiley and Sons, New York).
Prather LA, Alvarez-Fuentes O, Mayfield MH, Ferguson CJ. (2004) Commentary: implications of the decline in plant collecting for systematic and floristic research. Systematic Botany 29:216–220.[CrossRef]
Rigler FH. (1982) Recognition of the possible: an advantage of empiricism in ecology. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 39:1323–1331.
Rigler FH and Peters RH. (1995) Science and limnology. (Ecology Institute, Oldendorf/Lutie (Germany)).
Russo L. (2004) The forgotten revolution: how science was born in 300 BC and why it had to be reborn(Springer-Verlag, Berlin).
Shipley B. (2000) Cause and correlation in biology(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge).
Shugart HH and Smith TM. (1996) A review of forest patch models and their application to global change research. Climatic Change 34:131–153.
Tansley AG. (1923) Practical plant ecology. A guide for beginners in the field study of plant communities(Allen & Unwin, London).
Tilman D. (1982) Resource competition and community structure(Princeton University Press, Princeton).
Urban DL and Shugart HH. (1992) Individual based models of forest succession. In Glenn-Lewin DC, Peet RK, Veblen TT (Eds.). Plant succession(Chapman and Hall, London) pp. 249–292.
Wright R. (2004) A short history of progress(Anansi Press, Toronto).
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||