Francisco López, Jose Serrano and Francisco Acosta are at the Depto de Ecologia, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Trends Ecol Evol. 1994 Apr;9(4):150-3. doi: 10.1016/0169-5347(94)90185-6.
Animal and plant ecologists generally follow separate paths. This often leads to disjointed approaches to solving similar ecological problems. In the past 20 years, two related, but unconnected, research fields have undergone rapid development: modular demography, with its morphological and functional analysis of resource capture, until now basically the domain of plant ecology; and foraging theory, traditionally applied and developed in animal ecology. The results of recent research on the foraging strategies of ants and clonal plants, however, outline a general framework of functional parallels between both types of organisms that could link important aspects of animal and plant foraging ecology.
动物和植物生态学家通常各走各的路。这往往导致解决类似生态问题的方法脱节。在过去的 20 年里，两个相关但不相关的研究领域迅速发展：模块人口统计学，其对资源捕获的形态和功能分析，到目前为止基本上是植物生态学的领域；以及觅食理论，传统上应用和发展于动物生态学。然而，最近对蚂蚁和克隆植物觅食策略的研究结果勾勒出了这两种生物之间功能平行的一般框架，这可能将动物和植物觅食生态学的重要方面联系起来。
