A Little Knowledge (plus a Lot of Information) May Be a Very Da

Here, I address two other problems raised by this article. A review of published experimental results led the authors to conclude that “diversity enhanced ecosystem stability”, where this is defined as “the ability to withstand recurrent perturbations”. This curious statement reverses modern theory of ecological diversity in the ocean as discussed, for instance, by Ramón Margalef. Ecosystems of polar seas and upwelling regions are constrained to remain low­diversity, juvenile systems by the strong seasonal “recurrent perturbations” that they experience, while ecosystems of tropical seas are permitted to evolve their characteristic high diversity only because of the relatively low level of “recurrent perturbation” that they experience. Here is a classical case of the danger of assuming that correlation indicates causality.