Food Webs and Niche Spaces

✍ Scribed by Joel E. Cohen

• Book ID: 104272361
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 137 KB
• Volume: 42
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1522-9602
• DOI: 10.1016/s0092-8240(80)80071-1

✦ Synopsis

Robert M. Hutchins once defined a social scientist as a man who counts telephone poles. In making this facetious remark, Hutchins was characterizing that common attitude of mind which identifies counting with quantitative, and quantitative with science, independent of what it is that is being counted. The volume under review is an ecological-version of Hutchins' °°social science".

Ecology, like social science, is blessed with many opportunities for counting. There are in fact endless censuses to be made, such as how many organisms of what kinds occupy an arbitrary region during an arbitrary time interval. The results of such tabulations become data, and thereby endowed with mystical qualities. Among the most satisfying qualities of