摘要
Population and community ecology as a science are about 100 years old,and we discuss here our opinion of what approaches have progressed well and which point to possible future directions.The three major threads within pop-ulation and community ecology are theoretical ecology,statistical tests and models,and experimental ecology.We suggest that our major objective is to understand what factors determine the distribution and abundance of organ-isms within populations and communities,and we evaluate these threads against this major objective.Theoretical ecology is elegant and compelling and has laid the groundwork for achieving our overall objectives with useful simple models.Statistics and statistical models have contributed informative methods to analyze quantitatively our understanding of distribution and abundance for future research.Population ecology is difficult to carry out in thefield,even though we may have all the statistical methods and models needed to achieve results.Community ecol-ogy is growing rapidly with much description but less understanding of why changes occur.Biodiversity science cuts across all these subdivisions but rarely digs into the necessary population and community science that might solve conservation problems.Climate change affects all aspects of ecology but to assume that everything in pop-ulation and community ecology is driven by climate change is oversimplified.We make recommendations on how to advance thefield with advice for present and future generations of population and community ecologists.
