Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2010 Jan 12;365(1537):49-60. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0155.
Community ecology and ecosystem ecology provide two perspectives on complex ecological systems that have largely complementary strengths and weaknesses. Merging the two perspectives is necessary both to ensure continued scientific progress and to provide society with the scientific means to face growing environmental challenges. Recent research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has contributed to this goal in several ways. By addressing a new question of high relevance for both science and society, by challenging existing paradigms, by tightly linking theory and experiments, by building scientific consensus beyond differences in opinion, by integrating fragmented disciplines and research fields, by connecting itself to other disciplines and management issues, it has helped transform ecology not only in content, but also in form. Creating a genuine evolutionary ecosystem ecology that links the evolution of species traits at the individual level, the dynamics of species interactions, and the overall functioning of ecosystems would give new impetus to this much-needed process of unification across ecological disciplines. Recent community evolution models are a promising step in that direction.
群落生态学和生态系统生态学为复杂生态系统提供了两种视角，这两种视角在很大程度上具有互补的优势和劣势。将这两种视角融合在一起，不仅是确保科学持续进步的必要条件，也是为社会提供科学手段以应对日益增长的环境挑战的必要条件。最近关于生物多样性和生态系统功能的研究在几个方面为此做出了贡献。通过解决一个对科学和社会都具有高度相关性的新问题，通过挑战现有范式，通过紧密联系理论和实验，通过在观点分歧之外建立科学共识，通过整合碎片化的学科和研究领域，通过将自身与其他学科和管理问题联系起来，它不仅在内容上，而且在形式上帮助改变了生态学。创建一个真正的进化生态系统生态学，将个体水平上物种特征的进化、物种相互作用的动态以及生态系统的整体功能联系起来，将为跨越生态学科的统一这一迫切需要的过程注入新的动力。最近的群落进化模型就是朝着这个方向迈出的有希望的一步。
