Can Ecology Achieve the Mathematical and Theoretical Rigor of Physics?

[Andy Kleinhesselink]

Hi I'm Andy,

I'm a post-doctoral scholar at UCLA studying Ecology. I'm hoping that ecology can achieve some of the mathematical and theoretical rigor of physics one day.

 

[rokytnji]

Cool Beans. Howdy and Welcome.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Hi Andy, welcome to PF!

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Welcome!

I'm hoping that ecology can achieve some of the mathematical and theoretical rigor of physics one day.

I know nothing in ecology, but just out of curiosity: does ecology have equations at all?

 

[Andy Kleinhesselink]

Tons of equations. Check out any quantitative ecology book from the library or any article in leading ecology journals such as American Naturalist or Ecology Letters.

One theory, the maximum entropy theory of ecology, made a big splash recently and is directly inspired by statistical mechanics in physics:

Maximum Entropy and Ecology: A Theory of Abundance, Distribution, and Energetics https://g.co/kgs/2t3eLo

In my view the problem with ecology is that we have a lot of equations but we don't know which to use.

We haven't been able to isolate and make precise measurements in the way physics has. This has probably hindered making definitive judgments on hypotheses. And we have very little predictive ability compared to physics. This may be because there is so much more statistical noise inherent in ecological data.

It's an area ripe for new insight and theory.

 

[berkeman]

Sounds like a good topic to start a thread on. I'll close this Introduction thread so you can start a PM conversation or start a new thread (maybe in the Earth forum?). Thanks.