Preface
The International Review of Hydrobiology was originally founded in 1908. A hundred year history of the journal gives reason to celebrate by thinking about a special 'Leitmotif'. We choose Paradigms as a Leitmotif, because inspired by discussions with our colleagues at the IGB and elsewhere, we felt a desire to think "outside the box". We invited leading scientists from a broad array of disciplines, age, and countries for contributions on 'Paradigm Shifts in Limnology and Marine Biology' -a forum for the authors to express their opinions.
Since the publication of T. S. KUHN'S "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962), the international scientific community has realized that the advancement of science is not a linear process, but rather is characterized by shifts in paradigms. A scientific paradigm combines a set of practices and thought patterns that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time, thereby building the basis for the "current world view". As scientific knowledge advances, inevitably new findings will contradict the "current paradigm" resulting in the establishment of new paradigms or theories that better integrate "actual knowledge". KUHN wrote that "Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science"; this statement within itself represents a paradigm shift in the history of scientific thinking.
As hoped for -the authors approached the exciting theme of paradigms shift in very different ways from giving a historic overview of the evolution of the paradigm to introducing a new paradigm and including philosophical, societal and communicational issues. Specifically, this involves papers on global environmental change, lake physics, the whole arena of phosphorous including phosphorous release processes, phosphorous as the prime limiting factor and ecotechnology. A number of papers relate to food webs dealing with energy flow, prey quality and stoichiometry, trophic cascades as well as food webs as a system of differential equations. Finally, other papers focus on biodiversity, adaptations to flow regimes, rapid adaptive evolution, and on the differences and discrepancies found between the research fields of limnology and fish ecology.
We sincerely hope that this centenary issue of the International Review of Hydrobiology will prove an inspiration not only to researchers working directly in aquatic ecology, but also to those working in sister disciplines. The authors stimulated our optimism with regards to the progress to be made in the basic research arenas of our disciplines. Indeed, given the verve of the contributions, we have not yet reached the "end of aquatic sciences".
Finally, we would like to thank all contributing authors for their inspiring work, the reviewers for their intellectual and critical input as well as our colleagues at the IGB for their fruitful discussions on paradigm shifts and trends. A special thanks goes to URSULA WALZ for her work at the editorial office and to the Wiley-VCH for an ongoing excellent cooperation.