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Simple models, complex models, useful models: can we tell them from the flap of a butterfly’s wings?

A butterfly flaps its wings,
an ecologist wonders,
where have all the flowers gone

Metapopulation dynamicsEpistemologyModellingBayesianism

Pablo Almaraz, (2014) Simple models, complex models, useful models: can we tell them from the flap of a butterfly’s wings? Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 2: 54, doi: DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2014.00054

Cite
BibTeX
@article{Almaraz2014,
  author = {Almaraz, Pablo},
  title = {{Simple models, complex models, useful models: can we tell them from the flap of a butterfly's wings?}},
  journal = {Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution},
  volume = {2},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.3389/fevo.2014.00054},
  publisher = {Frontiers Media SA}
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
AU  - Almaraz, Pablo
TI  - Simple models, complex models, useful models: can we tell them from the flap of a butterfly's wings?
T2  - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
PY  - 2014
VL  - 2
DO  - 10.3389/fevo.2014.00054
UR  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2014.00054
PB  - Frontiers Media SA
ER  -
APA

Almaraz, P. (2014). Simple models, complex models, useful models: can we tell them from the flap of a butterfly's wings?. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2014.00054

Authors
Affiliations

Pablo Almaraz

ICMAN-CSIC

Published

August 2014

Doi

10.3389/fevo.2014.00054

Live: the Lorenz system (σ = 10, ρ = 28, β = 8/3). Particles are born in a cloud about 0.002 across at one point of the attractor and spread over all of it within about ten time units, since nearby states separate at the rate λ₁ ≈ 0.91.

Abstract

The strategy of scientific model building is the strategy of abstraction. An abstraction is devised to explain the workings of certain mechanistic principles and, as subjective constructs they are neither right nor wrong. Rather, abstractions obscure or enlighten the process under study, yielding useless or useful models. Two opposing approaches are usually followed in the process of ecological model construction as a route to understanding. In the first one, a model is worked out from theoretical principles and a set of testable predictions are then confronted with data from real systems. In the second approach, it is the detailed knowledge of the natural history of a particular system what drives the level of complexity of a mechanistic model used to fit empirical data, and this model is further used to reproduce the dynamics of the original system and, ideally, of other systems. Given the current challenges in the study of population dynamics, which abstraction is more useful?

Important figure

The Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia). Author: Christian Fischer (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Citation

 Add to Zotero 

@article{Almaraz2014,
  title = {Simple Models, Complex Models, Useful Models: Can We Tell Them from the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings?},
  author = {Almaraz, Pablo},
  date = {2014-08-29},
  journaltitle = {Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution},
  volume = {2},
  pages = {54},
  doi = {10.3389/fevo.2014.00054}
}