University of Michigan ecologists Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer made their initial forays into agrosystems biodiversity research in the late 1980s while teaching an ecology field course in Costa Rica.
They conducted field exercises at local coffee farms and quickly discovered a surprising diversity of insects. Through interactions with local farmers and international students in the course, they gained an appreciation for the role of agriculture in the conservation of biodiversity.
Since then, Perfecto, the James E. Crowfoot Collegiate Professor of Environmental Justice at the School for Environment and Sustainability, and Vandermeer, the Asa Gray Distinguished University Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, have focused on the interrelationships between biodiversity conservation, biological pest control, and food sovereignty—concepts that they found to be interrelated only through their extensive research at coffee farms in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
In a research article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Perfecto and Vandermeer examine competition among the ant community at a Puerto Rican coffee farm and the maintenance of species diversity there.
In general, how does fieldwork like your long-term studies in Mexico and Puerto Rico help inform ecological theory?
Perfecto: Our work is unusual in that we combine fieldwork and ecological theory in a mutually reinforcing manner. In contemporary research, it is common for ecological studies to be either strictly empirical or strictly theoretical, depending on the researchers and their interests. Our approach is distinct. We take standard ecological theory as a clue for what fieldwork might be interesting and important, do the fieldwork, and then use the field results as a motivation for the development of new theory. Therefore, our fieldwork in Mexico and Puerto Rico is essential for our scientific enterprise as a whole.
In this new PNAS paper, you propose merging two concepts in ecological theory, transitive competition and intransitive competition. Explain t
