Team Theory: When we can’t experiment and we need to tackle long and large scales

The most important problems ecologists face today often involve large spatial extents and also long times.The study of ecology at those scales typically precludes direct experimentation.  I argue that these constraints turn the role of theory vs. empiricism on its head in terms of hypotheses generation vs. testing.  I further discuss implications for the role of experimentation vs. observation, and for the challenge and importance of ‘induction’ from the mesoscale.