Ecology's uneasy relationship with theory

Background/Question/Methods

Ecology has a rich theoretical tradition, yet that large body of theory has a surprisingly weak relationship to empirical work. Theory is more than the mathematical models that are typically considered to consititute theoretical ecology and I provide a brief overview of the multiple aspects of theory.

Results/Conclusions

I review the history of conceptual and mathematical theory in ecology, especially the renaissance that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, I consider a survey of papers published in Ecology over the decades and show that very few papers, even today, grapple with that theory. I finish with some speculations about why and what we should be doing to integrate theory with the rest of ecology.