An invitation to ecological economics

The emerging interdisciplinary field of ecological economics should be a recognized research priority. Only through a combination of sound ecology and good economics can we hope to manage our exploitation of the biosphere in a manner that is both sustainable and efficient. This article is an invitation to ecologists to use economic tools and to participate in ecological economic debate. To this end, we review basic ecological economic concepts and discuss how the field has arisen, what benefits it offers, and what challenges it must overcome.     

Criteria for release of genetically-improved phytoseiids: an examination of the risks associated with release of biological control agents

Biological control of agricultural pests by phytoseiid predators has been achieved through classical introductions, conservation of indigenous and established foreign species, and augmentation of both introduced and indigenous species. Laboratory selection of phytoseiids has produced several strains that have been mass reared and released for pest management programs in glasshouses and agricultural cropping systems. Concerns over risks of classical biological control have developed recently. The development of recombinant DNA (rDNA) techniques for the genetic manipulation of crops and microorganisms also has inaugurated a debate on the safety of releasing transgenic organisms into the environment. This debate will extend to the release of phytoseiids that have been manipulated with rDNA techniques. Risks associated with releasing phytoseiids for augmentation or classical biological control programs are minimal and the benefits are great. Research initiated to answer questions about the risks of releasing transgenic phytoseiids into the environment provides opportunities to expand our understanding of the ecological impact of phytoseiids in agricultural and natural environments and could lead to improved pest management tactics.     

Genetically modified plants: the stakes.

Generically modified plants (GMP) are massively used on the American continent in Australia and in China, since they represent an unquestionable potential for progress. New attributes are therefore devoted to the human and animal diet, to the facilitating of culture management, to the reducing of the chemical fertilizer and pesticide usage, and to the conquest of new cultural spaces. Considering itself to be flawed by a too hasty plunge into the market, concomitant with sagging evaluations of other innovations, Europe is confronted by a strong societal debate which blocks GMP cultures and orientates the research towards an evaluation of the environmental and public health risks and an evaluation of their economical and sociological impacts. The authors encourage this societal debate in order to arbitrate the presence of transgenes in conventional productions and products, to define the accepted rules of responsibility, to decide what is not acceptable, and to involve the more upstream actors and operators of the innovation process, all that keeping in mind the agronomical, ecological and economical repercussions of their decisions.     

Towards a more open debate about values in decision-making on agricultural biotechnology

Regulatory decision-making over the use of products of new technology aims to be based on science-based risk assessment. In some jurisdictions, decision-making about the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) plants is blocked supposedly because of scientific uncertainty about risks to the environment. However, disagreement about the acceptability of risks is primarily a dispute over normative values, which is not resolvable through natural sciences. Natural sciences may improve the quality and relevance of the scientific information used to support environmental risk assessments and make scientific uncertainties explicit, but offer little to resolve differences about values. Decisions about cultivating GM plants will thus not necessarily be eased by performing more research to reduce scientific uncertainty in environmental risk assessments, but by clarifying the debate over values. We suggest several approaches to reveal values in decision-making: (1) clarifying policy objectives; (2) determining what constitutes environmental harm; (3) making explicit the factual and normative premises on which risk assessments are based; (4) better demarcating environmental risk assessment studies from ecological research; (5) weighing the potential for environmental benefits (i.e., opportunities) as well as the potential for environmental harms (i.e., risks); and (6) expanding participation in the risk governance of GM plants. Recognising and openly debating differences about values will not remove controversy about the cultivation of GM plants. However, by revealing what is truly in dispute, debates about values will clarify decision-making criteria.     

Adding Value to Ecological Risk Assessment with Population Modeling

Current measures used to estimate the risks of toxic chemicals are not relevant to the goals of the environmental protection process, and thus ecological risk assessment (ERA) is not used as extensively as it should be as a basis for cost-effective management of environmental resources. Appropriate population models can provide a powerful basis for expressing ecological risks that better inform the environmental management process and thus that are more likely to be used by managers. Here we provide at least five reasons why population modeling should play an important role in bridging the gap between what we measure and what we want to protect. We then describe six actions needed for its implementation into management-relevant ERA.     

Ecological laws: what would they be and why would they matter?

There remains considerable debate over the existence of ecological laws. However, this debate has not made use of an adequate account of what a relationship would have to be like in order for it to qualify as an ecological law. As a result, confusions have persisted not only over how to show that ecological laws do (or do not) exist, but also regarding why their existence would matter – other than to whether ecology looks like physics. I argue that ecological laws would have to possess collectively a distinctive kind of invariance under counterfactual perturbations. I call this invariance "stability." A law of physics, such as the law that all bodies travel no faster than the speed of light, is not only true, but also necessary in a physically significant sense. (A body must travel no faster than light; it couldn't do otherwise, even if it were subjected to a greater force.) Likewise, the stability of ecological laws would render them necessary in an ecologically relevant sense. Furthermore, ecological laws would differ from fundamental laws of physics in the range of counterfactual perturbations under which they are invariant. Therefore, I argue, the existence of ecological laws would make ecological explanations irreducible to even the most complete possible physical explanations of the same phenomena. Ecological laws would make ecology genuinely autonomous from physics.     

Laws of nature and laws of ecology

We address the question of whether there are laws in ecology. Although there has been a great deal of recent interest in this topic, much of the relevant debate has been conducted under some common misconceptions about what laws of nature are. Once these misconceptions are cleared up, the case for ecology having laws is much stronger. Indeed, we suggest that the case for laws in ecology is no better or worse than the case for laws in physics.     

Diabetes and the internet

This paper examines what the World Wide Web has to offer patients, families and professionals in relation to diabetes. The potential pitfalls and dangers are discussed, leading to a wider debate on how the Internet can be expected to impact upon diabetes and other health care provision in the near future, and how health care professionals' practices will have to change. Themes include: the World Wide Web (finding material, assessing authenticity, pitfalls for patients, personalized pages, chat rooms, security); e-mail consultation (benefits, risks, minimizing risk, what to tell patients, legal constraints, security); telemedicine (telemetry, surveillance, security); search engines (journals, etc.); looking ahead (digital television, web-based medical records).     

基于土地利用变化的细河流域景观生态风险评估

以辽宁省细河流域为研究对象,利用1985、1995年和2005年3个时期的Landsat TM及2015年Landsat OLI遥感数据,进行了细河流域土地利用解译,定量分析了流域近30年来土地利用动态变化特征;根据景观生态学理论引入景观生态风险评价模型,将研究区划分为340个生态风险评价单元,基于地统计学和空间自相关方法,对1985—2015年细河流域景观生态风险时空分布特征及空间关联格局进行了评价。结果表明:(1)自1985年以来,研究区的6种土地利用类型皆发生了变化,其中建设用地由于林地和耕地的大量转入增加最明显。(2)1985—2015年流域高、较高和中生态风险区面积增加,且向流域南部转移;低、较低生态风险区面积减少,且向流域北部集聚;流域整体生态风险呈增高趋势。(3)研究区各时期景观生态风险呈现正的空间相关性,在空间上趋于集聚。人类活动干扰导致景观破碎,是影响该区域景观生态风险最重要的原因。     

One option,two countries,several strategies: subjacent mechanisms of assisted migration implementation in Canada and France

Climate change obliges societies to develop adaptive strategies in order to maintain sustainable management of resources and landscapes. However, the development and implementation of these strategies require dialogue between researchers and policy‐makers about what they understand for adaptation. This dialogue can be hindered by language differences, the hidden agendas, and conflicting concerns of those involved. In this research study, we explored the mechanisms that underlie the implementation process of assisted migration (AM), an adaptation strategy that aims to limit the impact of climate change. We conducted a comparative analysis of 80 semistructured interviews with actors in the forestry sectors in Canada and France. In Canada, our results show a division between the provinces strategies, causing a debate about AM because researchers are wary of the geoengineering and economic arguments that frame AM in areas where the effects of climate change remain unclear. In contrast, we found that the observation of climate impacts is a strong trigger for the application of AM despite an awareness of its associated risks. In France, we explained the absence of AM implementation by a lack of information flow between research and foresters regarding the concept of AM, a cultural attachment of French foresters to their forest landscapes and that climate change effects are not clear yet. Clarity on what implies a true ecological engineering approach in ecological restoration can help maintaining adaptive actions like AM within the general scope of ecosystem management and minimize simplistic applications of adaptation strategies because of climate change.     

The complementarity of single-species and ecosystem-oriented research in conservation research

There has been much debate about the relative merits of single-species vs ecosystem-oriented research for conservation. This debate has become increasingly important in recent times as resource managers and policy makers in some jurisdictions focus on ecosystem-level problems. We highlight the potential strengths and limitations of both kinds of research, discuss their complementarity and highlight problems that may arise where competition occurs between the two kinds of research.
While a combination of approaches is ideal, a scarcity of funding, time, and expertise means it is impossible to study and manage each species, ecological process, or ecological pattern separately. Making decisions about priorities for the kinds of research, priorities for the kinds of conservation management, and associated allocation of scarce funds is a non-trivial task. We argue for an approach whereby limited resources for conservation research are targeted at projects most likely to close important knowledge gaps, while also promoting ongoing synergies between single-species and ecosystem-oriented research.     

The evolutionary origins of organelles

Analysis of organellar genomes strongly supports the idea that chloroplasts and mitochondria originated in evolution as eubacteria-like endosymbionts, whose closest contemporaries are cyanobacteria and purple photosynthetic bacteria, respectively. However, there is still much debate about whether a single endosymbiotic event or multiple ones gave rise to each organelle in different eukaryotes, and considerable uncertainty about what has happened to the genomes of chloroplasts and mitochondria since their appearance in the eukaryotic cell.     

Ecological and community-wide character displacement: the next generation

Ecological character displacement, mostly seen as increased differences of size in sympatry between closely‐related or similar species, is a focal hypothesis assuming that species too similar to one another could not coexist without diverging, owing to interspecific competition. Thus, ecological character displacement and community‐wide character displacement (overdispersion in size of potential competitors within ecological guilds) were at the heart of the debate regarding the role of competition in structuring ecological communities. The debate has focused on the evidence presented in earlier studies and generated a new generation of rigorous, critical studies of communities. Character displacement research in the past two decades provides sound statistical support for the hypothesis in a wide variety of taxa, albeit with a phylogenetically skewed representation. A growing number of studies are strongly based in functional morphology, and some also demonstrate actual morphologically related resource partitioning. Phylogenetic models and experimental work have added to the scope and depth of earlier research, as have theoretical studies. However, many challenging ecological and evolutionary issues, regarding both selective forces (at the inter‐ and intraspecific level) and resultant patterns, remain to be addressed. Ecological character displacement and community‐wide character displacement are here to stay as the focus of much exciting research.     

The intensity of competition versus its importance: an overlooked distinction and some implications

The intensity of competition is a physiological concept, related directly to the well-being of individual organisms but only indirectly and conditionally to their fitness, and even more indirectly to the evolution of populations and the structure of communities. The importance of competition is primarily an ecological and evolutionary concept, related directly to the ecology and fitness of individuals but only indirectly to their physiological states. The intensity of competition is not necessarily correlated with the intensities of predation, disturbance, abiotic stress, or other ecological processes. The importance of competition is necessarily relative to the importances of other processes. Intensity refers primarily to the process of present competition, whereas importance refers primarily to the products of past competition. The distinction between the intensity and the importance of competition clarifies two long-standing ecological debates. Some ecologists have proposed that competition is greater in more stressful habitats, others the opposite, and still others that no such relationship exists. Evidence cited to refute or support these positions often confuses intensity and importance. Distinguishing between them focuses questions more sharply and indicates what sorts of new evidence should be sought. The more widely known debate over the prevalence of competition as an agent of community structure is a debate about the importance of competition, but evidence about the intensity of competition has often been used by both sides. We argue that intensity and importance need not be correlated, and so measurements of the intensity of competition are not directly relevant to this debate. This distinction also generates testable hypotheses and suggests directions for research. For example, we hypothesize that competition can be unimportant even if it is very intense: no such hypothesis is possible unless importance is distinguished from intensity. We discuss the application of these ideas to methods and theories used to study competition, ecological communities, and the evolution of competitive ability. We advocate a research approach that presumes multiple, interacting causes, including competition, affecting community structure, and we show how the distinction between intensity and importance helps to make this feasible.     

Transients: the key to long-term ecological understanding?

Ecological theory has been dominated by a focus on long-term or asymptotic behavior as a way to understand natural systems. Yet experiments are done on much shorter timescales, and the relevant timescales for ecological systems can also be relatively short. Thus, there is a mismatch between the timescales of most experiments and the timescales of many theoretical investigations. However, recent work has emphasized the importance of transient dynamics rather than long-term behavior in ecological systems, enabling the examination of forces that allow coexistence on ecological timescales. Through an examination of what leads to transients in ecological systems, a deeper appreciation of the forces leading to persistence or coexistence in ecological systems emerges, as well as a general understanding of how population levels can change through time.     

基于生态系统服务的城市化区域生态风险表征方法研究

快速城市化导致城市周边区域生态系统服务损失并引发生态风险。以多种类型的生态系统服务作为生态风险的评价终点,构建了基于服务价值量的城市化区域生态风险表征方法,以北京市为例对方法进行了应用,并进行了风险评价结果的不确定性分析和参数敏感性分析。案例研究显示2015年北京市生态风险总体处于低风险接近中等风险水平,低风险和极低风险区域面积占全市的50%以上,主要分布于北京市西部和北部,高风险和极高风险区域面积占20%左右,主要分布于中心城区。生态风险空间格局特征表明北京市城市区域的扩张造成周边区域生态系统服务的下降,导致生态风险水平的上升。研究提出的生态风险指数同生态系统服务当量因子间具有显著的线性关系,可用于估算生态系统服务价值。不确定性和参数敏感性分析表明生态风险指数计算结果变异较小,指数具有较高的可靠性。研究方法能够综合表征城市化区域的生态风险,定量表征结果便于决策者理解,具有应用于风险评价和管理实践的价值。     

The Ashley Treatment: Improving Quality of Life or Infringing Dignity and Rights?

The ‘Ashley treatment’ (growth attenuation, removal of the womb and breasts buds of a severely disabled child) has raised much ethical controversy. This article starts from the observation that this debate suffers from a lack of careful philosophical analysis which is essential for an ethical assessment. I focus on two central arguments in the debate, namely an argument defending the treatment based on quality of life and an argument against the treatment based on dignity and rights. My analysis raises doubts as to whether these arguments, as they stand in the debate, are philosophically robust. I reconstruct what form good arguments for and against the treatment should take and which assumptions are needed to defend the according positions. Concerning quality of life (Section 2), I argue that to make a discussion about quality of life possible, it needs to be clear which particular conception of the good life is employed. This has not been sufficiently clear in the debate. I fill this lacuna. Regarding rights and dignity (section 3), I show that there is a remarkable absence of references to general philosophical theories of rights and dignity in the debate about the Ashley treatment. Consequently, this argument against the treatment is not sufficiently developed. I clarify how such an argument should proceed. Such a detailed analysis of arguments is necessary to clear up some confusions and ambiguities in the debate and to shed light on the dilemma that caretakers of severely disabled children face.     

The Roles of Phytoestrogens in Primate Ecology and Evolution

Most primates depend heavily on plant foods; thus their chemical composition is key to understanding primate ecology and evolution. One class of plant compounds of strong current interest are phytoestrogens, which have the potential to alter fertility, fecundity, and survival. These plant compounds mimic the activity of vertebrate estrogens, resulting in altered physiology and behavior. Here, we review what is known about phytoestrogens from an ecological and evolutionary perspective. Much of what is known about the effects of phytoestrogens on the endocrine system comes from research on human foods, especially soybeans (Glycine max). Two opposing perspectives have resulted from this research: 1) phytoestrogens provide health benefits, such as cancer prevention, or 2) phytoestrogens act as endocrine disruptors and threaten reproductive health. Studies of wild primates have only recently begun examining the presence of estrogenic plants in the primate diet and the effects of their consumption. Evidence that a number of primate species eat plants containing phytoestrogens and research documenting behavioral and hormonal effects of estrogenic plant consumption for red colobus monkeys (Procolobus rufomitratus) augment captive and laboratory studies to suggest that these compounds promote differential survival and reproduction. Although much debate is currently taking place over the role of phytoestrogens and other endocrine disruptors in human health issues and in threatening biodiversity, we argue that an ecological and evolutionary approach is needed to reach appropriate conclusions.     

Kin selection is the key to altruism

Kin selection theory, also known as inclusive fitness theory, has been the subject of much debate and misunderstanding. Nevertheless, the idea that relatedness among individuals can drive the evolution of altruism has emerged as a central paradigm in evolutionary biology. Or has it? In two recent articles, E.O. Wilson argues that kin selection should no longer be considered the main explanation for the evolution of altruism in insect societies. Here, we discuss what these articles say about kin selection and how it relates to the theory. We conclude that kin selection remains the key explanation for the evolution of altruism in eusocial insects.     

Opportunities for Nonnative Ecological Replacements in Ecosystem Restoration

Translocations can take a variety of forms, and there is considerable debate as to what defines an acceptable translocation. This is particularly so if a proposal suggests moving a species beyond its natural range, which might be necessary for conservation purposes if habitat within the natural range is extensively modified. An extension of this approach is to use closely related ecological analogs to replace extinct species. This approach is controversial, and opportunities to do so will be rare, particularly for vertebrate species, but the use of ecological analogs is not without precedent, and ultimately will provide for more complete ecological restoration. We discuss the current use of ecological analogs to replace extinct species and conclude with a rare opportunity to replace the extinct New Zealand quail Coturnix novaezelandiae with the extant Australian brown quail Coturnix ypsilophora.