School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2011 Nov;51(5):653-61. doi: 10.1093/icb/icr091. Epub 2011 Aug 2.
Schwenk and colleagues challenged biologists to develop a deeper understanding of the linkages between organisms and environments. These linkages are captured by the concept of the niche, which has guided theoretical and empirical research in ecology for decades. Despite this research, we still cannot explain or predict much of the variation in niches over space and time. This shortcoming hinders efforts to forecast biological responses to environmental change. We believe that progress has been slowed by poor coordination between theoretical and empirical efforts to understand the evolution of niches. Therefore, progress should be sped by research programs that integrate modeling and experiments. Such research programs should focus on the structures of environmental variation, the constraints on phenotypes, and the relationships between phenotypes and fitness.
斯文克及其同事向生物学家们提出挑战，要求他们加深对生物与环境之间联系的理解。这些联系由生态位概念来捕捉，该概念指导了生态学领域数十年来的理论和实证研究。尽管开展了这些研究，我们仍然无法解释或预测在空间和时间上的生态位有多大差异。这一缺陷阻碍了我们预测生物对环境变化的反应的努力。我们认为，由于理解生态位进化方面的理论和实证工作之间协调不力，阻碍了进展。因此，通过整合建模和实验的研究方案，应该可以加快进展。此类研究方案应侧重于环境变化的结构、表型的约束以及表型与适应性之间的关系。
