3 - Must There Be a Balance of Nature?

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The idea of a balance of nature reaches back into antiquity. Egerton (1973) has provided perhaps the most detailed look at this history, tracing the idea from its early manifestations in ancient Greek thought to its most explicit formulations in the ecological studies of the present century. As he points out, however, one of the most striking features of this notion has been its typically implicit character. It usually functions as a background assumption that is rarely brought forward for explicit study. This remains largely true of the balance of nature idea in ecology as a self-conscious scientific field; it has worked in the background, shaping inquiry, but it has rarely been hauled out into the daylight and closely examined.

This chapter does not attempt a comprehensive look at all the various sides of the balance of nature idea (for a comprehensive review see Pimm 1991). Instead, it focuses on one particular aspect – the role that balance of nature plays as the linchpin among a constellation of ideas that jointly served, at least at the hands of some ecologists, to set the course of inquiry for population and community ecology. In keeping with its traditional background role, the balance of nature idea – together with the associated ideas that emphasize the prevalence of biotic interaction, density dependence, and competition – has exerted this guiding influence in a largely implicit fashion.