Elsevier

Ecological Modelling

Volume 341, 10 December 2016, Pages 1-4
Ecological Modelling

Response to comments on “Uncertainty principle in niche assessment: A solution to the dilemma redundancy vs. competitive exclusion, and some analytical consequences”

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2016.09.014Get rights and content

Abstract

The influence of quantum ecological uncertainty (QEU: a discrete statistical trade-off between the standard deviations of species diversity and energy, two indicators that are essential to define the ecological niche of every species), has been proposed as a plausible explanation to the debate between the competitive exclusion principle (CEP) and the hypothesis of functional redundancy (HFR). The debate CEP  HFR is a manifestation of the wide spectrum of issues connected with a very important problem in ecology: the so-called “biodiversity paradox” (i.e.: How is it possible that so many species can coexist despite the underlying influence of interspecific competition?). Any testable theoretical alternative to explain species coexistence depends on an accurate assessment of the ecological niche in practice. However, under QEU, the assessment of ecological niche cannot be as accurate as we want due to an objective limitation of nature: the above-mentioned trade-off. Consequently, it is nonsense following the debate about this topic in the conventional way; it is necessary to change our traditional point of view about this issue in order to develop a non-conventional interpretation of ecosystem functioning. However, QEU has been strongly criticized in a recently published article. This article is devoted to clarify certain misunderstandings whose nature is evident by reading the above-mentioned criticism and its precursory publications in comparison with the spectrum of articles that supports QEU. The general fulfillment of QEU has also been questioned by the above-mentioned criticism, so it is additionally supported in this article by a noticeably abbreviated inclusion of results from field data, surveyed under different circumstances in comparison with previous data, from two inland water taxocenes (zooplankton rotifers and crustaceans, Acton Lake, Ohio, U.S.A.) to which this model has not been applied so far. Our general conclusion is that the criticism to QEU has been groundlessly proposed due to epistemological inaccuracies; fragmentary understanding about the principles connected with QEU; as well as an incomplete literature review.

Introduction

Rodríguez et al. (2015a), starting from large sequences of statistical frequency distributions of species diversity values, have shown that in the same measure in which the spectrum of species diversity per plot (Hp: diversity index of Shannon at the plot level; see Rodríguez et al., 2015a; Eq. (1)) in which species live is assessed with higher accuracy (lower standard deviation: σ) there is an increment of σ in the measurement of the spectrum of eco-kinetic energy values per plot (Eep: a proxy for trophic energy; additional explanations in Section 2), and vice versa. So there is an insurmountable level of inaccuracy in our description of the ecological niche. Rodríguez et al. (2015a) named this trade-off as quantum ecological uncertainty (QEU, hereafter; additional explanations in Section 2). Under these circumstances, it is impossible to increase the accuracy of our knowledge about the nature and intensity of competition as much as we want by means of conventional methods. So, it is necessary to apply a wave-like interpretation of ecosystem functioning; an option that has also been proposed by the very authors that have proposed the QEU (see Rodríguez et al., 2015b). Thus, a debate that has endured for decades (see Lewin, 1983), has arrived to a win-win solution: species coexistence is possible only because when the hypothesis of functional redundancy (HFR) is true in one dimension (either low values of σHp or σEep) the competitive exclusion principle (CEP) is influencing in the opposite one (either high values of σEep or σHp), and vice versa. After all ecologists, willy nilly, have been forced to accept the coexistence of CEP and HRF in the collective academic mind, perhaps as an unwitting reflection that species coexistence depends on a combination of both alternatives in the real world.

The main goal of this article is to perform a comparative analysis in order to elucidate in what a measure the proposal of the authors of QEU, or the proposal of their critics (Kalmykov and Kalmykov, 2016), matches with the traits of any scientific model defined as an incomplete reflection of reality whose main goal, instead of reaching a “universal truth”, is obtaining good testable hypotheses relevant to understand important problems (see Levins, 1966, p. 430) in practice. The general fulfillment of QEU is additionally supported in this article by a very condensed inclusion (Appendix A, and a few lines at the end of the first paragraph in Section 3) of additional results from field data, surveyed under different circumstances in comparison with previous data, from two inland water taxocenes (rotifers and crustaceans, Acton Lake, Ohio, U.S.A.) to which this model has not been applied so far.

Section snippets

Epistemological inaccuracies in the criticism from Kalmykov and Kalmykov (2016)

Kalmykov and Kalmykov (2016, p. 1) start with a rhetorical resource or “argumentum ad verecundiam” (appeal to authority) that pervades their article as a whole: “I can never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model, I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand” (Lord Kelvin). A preliminary conceptual clarification is necessary here: What is the most probable meaning of the term

Fragmentary understanding about the principles that support QEU, and incomplete review of the literature that sustains the proposal criticized by Kalmykov and Kalmykov (2016)

The “gedankenexperiment” proposed by Kalmykov and Kalmykov (2016, p. 3) to refute QEU is unrealistically restrictive due to several reasons: (a) A beetle that is in hibernation is transiently “offline” from its ecological network, so it has no “ecological behavior” at all because its participation in the flow of energy tends to 0. (b) “One person as an observer vs. one beetle as a target of observation” is an observation without the statistical nature of any scientific observation in ecology or

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