Is there such a thing as a Synthesis Ecologist? Is Synthesis Ecology
it's own discipline? I'm curious for the community to post their
thoughts about this over at http://www.imachordata.com/?p=1178 - but
first some background:
These questions were in the air at the Trends in Ecological Analysis
and Synthesis Symposium (see http://storify.com/jebyrnes/treas20120/ for
running quotes from the symposium in reverse chronological order). Have
the last 20 years have witnessed the birth of Synthesis Ecology as its
own discipline? This question was argued about even amongst
participants who had taken part in, authored, or were otherwise involved
in some of the seminal synthetic papers in Ecology over the last two
decades.
As part of an ongoing project to document how synthetic work in ecology
has altered Ecology, several of us engaged in a lively debate, and I've
put up some salient points and arguments from this discussion at
http://www.imachordata.com/?p=1178
We're curious as to what the broader ecological community thinks. I'd
love it if any of you had comments that you add to the discussion thread
on the blog (not here - I want these archived if at all possible).
So, if you're interested, please go and take a look at the link above
and let me know what you think.
Thanks!
-Jarrett Byrnes
-----------------------------------------
Jarrett E. K. Byrnes
Postdoctoral Fellow
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
ph: 805.892.2512
http://nceas.ucsb.edu/~byrnes
b:http://imachordata.com
t: @jebyrnes
g+:http://gplos.to/jebyrnes
