ReviewProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2010
Improved probability of detection of ecological "surprises".
Review in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Weak and inconsistent associations between birch-feeding insects and pollution levels around two industrial towns during substantial emission decline (1988-2025).Environmental monitoring and assessment · 2026Article
- Article
- Double Trouble: Aquatic Invasive Plants Can Promote Mosquitoes.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Limited tree mortality in unburned areas linked to bark beetle spillover from wildfires.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2025Article
- Interpreting a Sudden Population Decline in a Long-Lived Species (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Feasibility of implementing an integrated long-term database to advance ecosystem-based management in the Laurentian Great Lakes basin.Journal of Great Lakes research · 2024Article
- Beyond Kuhnian paradigms: Normal science and theory dependence in ecology.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Two decades of change in sea star abundance at a subtidal site in Puget Sound, Washington.PloS one · 2023Article
- Pesticide effects on the abundance of springtails and mites in field mesocosms at an agricultural site.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2022Article
- Data-Driven Management-A Dynamic Occupancy Approach to Enhanced Rabies Surveillance Prioritization.Viruses · 2021Article
- Climate change threatens Chinook salmon throughout their life cycle.Communications biology · 2021Article
- COVID-19 lockdown reveals tourists as seabird guardians.Biological conservation · 2021Article
- Impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors on stream macroinvertebrate community composition and functional diversity.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Interaction exposure effects of multiple disturbances: plant population resilience to ungulate grazing is reduced by creation of canopy gaps.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Temporal variation in total phosphorus concentrations revealed from a multidecadal monitoring program on Big Platte Lake, Michigan.Environmental monitoring and assessment · 2018Article
- Developing accurate prediction systems for the terrestrial environment.BMC biology · 2018Article
- Learning from single extreme events.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Black-swan events in animal populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ecological "surprises" are defined as unexpected findings about the natural environment. They are critically important in ecology because they are catalysts for questioning and reformulating views of the natural world, help shape assessments of the veracity of a priori predictions about ecological trends and phenomena, and underpin questioning of effectiveness of resource management. Despite the importance of ecological surprises, major gaps in understanding remain about how studies might be done differently or done better to improve the ability to identify them. We outline the kinds of ecological surprises that have arisen from long-term research programs that we lead in markedly different ecosystems around the world. Based on these case studies, we identify important lessons to guide both existing studies and new investigations to detect ecological surprises more readily, better anticipate unusual ecological phenomena, and take proactive steps to plan for and alleviate "undesirable" ecological surprises. Some of these lessons include: (i) maintain existing, and instigate new, long-term studies; (ii) conduct a range of kinds of parallel and concurrent research in a given target area; (iii) better use past literature and conceptual models of the target ecosystem in posing good questions and developing hypotheses and alternative hypotheses; and (iv) increase the capacity for ecological research to take advantage of opportunities arising from major natural disturbances. We argue that the increased anticipatory capability resulting from these lessons is critical given that ecological surprises may become more prevalent because of climate change and multiple and interacting environmental stressors.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.