School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Proc Biol Sci. 2020 May 13;287(1926):20200421. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0421. Epub 2020 May 6.
Anthropogenic environmental changes, or 'stressors', increasingly threaten biodiversity and ecosystem functioning worldwide. Multiple-stressor research is a rapidly expanding field of science that seeks to understand and ultimately predict the interactions between stressors. Reviews and meta-analyses of the primary scientific literature have largely been specific to either freshwater, marine or terrestrial ecology, or ecotoxicology. In this cross-disciplinary study, we review the state of knowledge within and among these disciplines to highlight commonality and division in multiple-stressor research. Our review goes beyond a description of previous research by using quantitative bibliometric analysis to identify the division between disciplines and link previously disconnected research communities. Towards a unified research framework, we discuss the shared goal of increased realism through both ecological and temporal complexity, with the overarching aim of improving predictive power. In a rapidly changing world, advancing our understanding of the cumulative ecological impacts of multiple stressors is critical for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. Identifying and overcoming the barriers to interdisciplinary knowledge exchange is necessary in rising to this challenge. Division between ecosystem types and disciplines is largely a human creation. Species and stressors cross these borders and so should the scientists who study them.
人为环境变化，或“胁迫因子”，正日益威胁全球生物多样性和生态系统功能。多胁迫研究是一个快速发展的科学领域，旨在理解并最终预测胁迫因子之间的相互作用。对主要科学文献的综述和荟萃分析主要针对淡水、海洋或陆地生态学或生态毒理学。在这项跨学科研究中，我们回顾了这些学科内部和之间的知识状况，以突出多胁迫研究中的共性和分歧。我们的综述不仅描述了以前的研究，还使用定量文献计量分析来确定学科之间的分歧，并将以前不相关的研究群体联系起来。为了建立一个统一的研究框架，我们讨论了通过增加生态和时间复杂性来实现增强现实性的共同目标，最终目的是提高预测能力。在这个快速变化的世界中，推进我们对多种胁迫累积生态影响的理解对于生物多样性保护和生态系统管理至关重要。为了应对这一挑战，必须识别并克服跨学科知识交流的障碍。生态系统类型和学科之间的划分在很大程度上是人为的。物种和胁迫因子跨越这些边界，研究它们的科学家也应该如此。
