On the Study of Ecosystems It seems that ecologists are very much in love with hypotheses, and try hard to prove that only one hypothesis is true across all ecosystems. However, I would like to think considering the different evolution histories and the environments, it is very possible that one hypothesis holds in some ecosystems while another hypothesis holds in other ecosystems. Many empirical studies on ecosystems have focused on measuring various properties of an ecosystem and plotting the relationships between these properties. However, ecosystem functioning is a result of complex interactions of many factors. To better understand the functioning of an ecosystem, it may be more important to look at its evolution history, and the interactions between all the species (including producers, consumers, predators and decomposers) and between the species and the environment. Theoretic research and modeling should play a more important role. In ecology, "holism" implies that ecosystems be studied as an "organism", and that it is not necessary to study its parts. This is not the same as the understanding of holism in the science of complex adaptive systems (CAS). The science of CAS argues that only studying the parts is not sufficient for understanding the whole because "The whole is larger than the parts." And it goes further to seek to understand how the properties of a system rise from the properties of the parts, and the interactions among the parts and between the parts and the environment. It doesn't ignore the study of the parts but studies the whole based on the understandings of the parts.
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