About the word 'community' in community ecology
There are several technical terms used in ecology that also have an everyday meaning. Community is one of them. So what, you might say. Well, the problem could be in communication.
I am not sure how common this is, but recently I was interviewed and during this interview I was asked about the ‘community feeling’ in soil and what that exactly is. Before that moment, I had only thought that this could happen, but now that it actually happened, I decided to write this little newsletter about it.
What exactly has happened? So, ‘community’ in ecology is a technical term that denotes the different species that co-occur in the same time and space and that interact. In everyday life, it means more living together well. Like inviting neighbors over for game night, accepting packages for people in the same house and having the kids play together. The term has a very positive connotation, it conveys a sense of unity, solidarity and togetherness. Therefore, when people hear about a ‘community’ of organisms, in the soil, for example, the first image this conjures up in their mind must be one of a bunch of things living together in harmony and getting along just fine.
This gets people off on the wrong track, because the interactions in a community include competition, parasitism, predation, and not just positive interactions, like facilitation. In fact, historically, community ecology has been overwhelmingly focused on the negative interactions, in particular competition.
The German word for an ecological community, ‘Lebensgemeinschaft’, goes even further, because in common language it means two people living together in a lifelong partnership without marriage. I wonder how this is in other languages? How is this in your language, dear reader?
So, the issue at hand is that when we as scientists use our language to communicate with the outside world, we need to be sure that it is understood in the way we intend. Otherwise, the communication fails. I don’t want people thinking all in community ecology is just harmony and things helping each other, that would create an inappropriate picture.
There are worse terms, in terms of their everyday-life meaning deviating strongly from the meaning of the technical term. One technical term I really strongly dislike for this reason is ‘redundancy’, since in everyday life this means, not needed; quite a dangerous interpretation. We recently published a paper about that, you can read it here. We should really stop using this term (in my lab this term has been on the black list for years).
So I wonder how many other such terms are there in ecology. Can you think of others?
And what is a solution? Well, the first step clearly is to be aware that there is this difference in meaning that could lead to misunderstanding. If there are good alternatives, like for redundancy, abandon that term and use another one.
Interested in hearing your opining, please share it in the comments!
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