The Role of Theory in Ecology

Theory can have many different kinds of use in illuminatingecological research. The examples sketched in this paper include:the uses and short-comings of population models currently usedin setting catch quotas for whales and for fisheries; the richarray of behaviour displayed by nonlinear equations and itsrelevance to understanding natural and managed populations;models for the interaction between populations (particularlythe regulation of natural populations by diseases); and somegeneral patterns of community organization. The paper concludeswith some remarks on the contrasts between public pieties about"The Scientific Method" and the way scientists actually work,from Darwin's day to our own.