{"id":316,"date":"2016-08-30T06:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecologybits.com\/?p=316"},"modified":"2016-08-29T15:17:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T19:17:41","slug":"online-book-club-forming-for-the-theory-of-ecological-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/2016\/08\/30\/online-book-club-forming-for-the-theory-of-ecological-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Online book club forming for “The Theory of Ecological Communities”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you follow me on Twitter or obsessively read the comments of the Dynamic Ecology blog<\/a>, you\u2019ll know that I\u2019ve been excited about the publication of Mark Vellend\u2019s new book, The Theory of Ecological Communities<\/em>, for many months. The book happened to come out just around the time of the ESA meeting, so the publishers rushed a half-dozen copies to the conference, one of which ended up in my suitcase. This year, my summer vacation follows ESA, and so this new book has become my vacation reading. Although I try to avoid working while on vacation<\/a>\u00a0[1]<\/span> and with young children, a vacation is really just a \u201cvacation\u201d in name only \u2013 going into an office is way less exhausting than taking care of young ‘uns<\/span><\/span>, I have not done well this time around. [2]<\/span> A paper got through review faster<\/strong>\u00a0than I was expecting, so I\u2019ve worked on proofs; I got an unexpected and well-paid very-short-term contract job that I didn\u2019t want to turn down; and I got excited about Mark\u2019s book.<\/span><\/span> Of course, what counts as “work” is a gray area, when you like your job, like most of us do. That\u2019s not to say we like all parts of our jobs, though. So this vacation, I\u2019m trying to not do the parts I don\u2019t like, and allow myself to do some of the parts I do like. Like reading. (And, apparently, organizing a book club.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, pre-child, I\u2019d be done with The Theory of Ecological Communities<\/em> by now. But I\u2019m not because, well, I have little kids. Instead, I\u2019m through the first of three sections of the book. And I\u2019ve been enjoying it. A big fan of Vellend 2010<\/a>, I found these first chapters went by quickly, mostly reviewing and fleshing out a bit the main tenets of the 2010 paper. They are quite clearly laying the groundwork for the next two sections, which I am very much looking forward to.<\/p>\n

One big reason why I have been and continue to be excited about this book is that as a student I hungered for a way to organize my thinking about community ecology, and never felt satisfied. Coming into ecology with a strong math and computer background, but little ecological knowledge, I looked for how to conceptually organize the field. Where do I start? What classes should I take? What are the big questions of our time? I think I even asked my advisors directly about these things in the first couple years. The only organizing structure that I felt was compelling was the distinction among organismal biology, population ecology, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology. (I was unfamiliar with macrosystem ecology back then.) And that didn\u2019t help me think about all the stuff<\/strong>\u00a0within community ecology.<\/p>\n

In the Tilman lab, everything was about competition. But in the Packer lab, behavior mattered. I took on a disease project, and found disease ecology to be almost its own field. When I spent time as a visiting grad student<\/a>\u00a0in the Leibold lab, suddenly dispersal was a much bigger deal than competition. I then got interested in food webs and predation. But I couldn\u2019t figure out how to fit everything together into a coherent whole. I took an ecological theory class, but I couldn\u2019t figure out where the forefront of the field was in order to try to contribute. I turned away from theory and did experimental and modeling work. And \u2013 to be very frank \u2013 my pure community ecology chapters from my dissertation are as yet unpublished because I can\u2019t figure out how to frame them well within the general context of community ecology. The number of ideas and papers and models in community ecology have seemed so numerous and so vaguely connected that I feel like I can\u2019t wrap my mind around them to see where my research fits.<\/p>\n

As a result, Mark\u2019s framework for fitting all<\/strong>\u00a0of community ecology onto a simple scaffold is very appealing. I am actually reading the book with an eye to publishing one community ecology dissertation chapter, and it\u2019s already helping to clarify my thinking. This book is also awesome for its references list. I seriously wish I could have read this book as a second-year grad student. The history chapter is brief, but cites most \u2013 if not all \u2013 of the big papers in community ecology that you should read as a community ecology grad student. I\u2019ve put a few cited papers that I\u2019ve overlooked on my must-read list. [3]<\/span> The references list even includes a citation to a blog post, which makes me unreasonably happy. Maybe this is the first blog post citation in a Princeton Press monograph? Jeremy will have to buy the book to find out which post of his it is\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It turns out that I\u2019m not the only one excited about The Theory of Ecological Communities<\/em>. I handful of us who grabbed the book at ESA and others who ordered it directly decided via Twitter to start a \u201cbook club\u201d \u2013 a discussion group where we read the book chapter-by-chapter and discuss it. Since we\u2019re all over the place geographically, we decided to do video calls for our discussions. So I set up a sign-up sheet<\/a>, figuring we might get 6 or 8 or 10 people who were interested \u2013 a group or two. But as of now, there are 28 people signed up, ranging from grad students to tenured profs and spanning three continents.<\/p>\n

I totally was not planning to organize a large international book club on my vacation, but life is full of surprises. If you want to get in on the crazy experiment that is this book club, sign up<\/a>\u00a0and get the book. (You can order from Princeton Press<\/a> or buy on Amazon<\/a>. Interlibrary Loan takes longer, but is cheaper.) The first discussion groups will begin next week, but I\u2019m pretty sure there are going to be more groups starting mid-to-late September, as there are several people who haven\u2019t been able to get the book yet who want to talk about it. The idea is to read a chapter per week and meet for an hour to discuss. That\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve really enjoyed the two book discussion groups I\u2019ve been part of as an ecologist (reading this<\/a>\u00a0and this<\/a>). Those have been in-person, though, so we\u2019ll see how online groups work out. If you\u2019ve got any experience with online book discussion groups \u2013 or any pointers in general \u2013 please do leave a comment below.<\/p>\n

Sign up for The Theory of Ecological Communities<\/em> Book Club<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you follow me on Twitter or obsessively read the comments of the Dynamic Ecology blog, you\u2019ll know that I\u2019ve been excited about the publication of Mark Vellend\u2019s new book, The Theory of Ecological Communities, for many months. The book happened to come out just around the time of the ESA meeting, so the publishers … <\/p>\n

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