Experimentação e replicabilidade em ecologia aquática

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Letícia Pereira dos
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFG
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/10990
• topic: Eecologia aquática; Funcionamento do ecossistema; Reprodutibilidade; Revisão; Síntese; Aquatic ecology; Ecosystem functioning; Reproducibility; Review; Synthesis; CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA

Experimentation in ecology has been widely addressed by researchers due to its ability to control environmental and biological effects of interest, and thus obtain more robust scientific evidence. However, in recent years there has been a growing debate about the “reproducibility crisis” in science. The main issue in the lack of reproducibility of the results is the failure of the scientific theory validation process that occurs through the accumulation of evidence by Works replicated by several researchers. Considering the continental aquatic ecosystems, for example, in the last decades, several experiments have sought to explain the consequences generated by changes in the composition and wealth of communities on ecosystem functions and services. Thus, within the context of experimental replication in ecology of continental aquatic environments, the present study had as objectives, divided into three chapters: (i) to evaluate experimental studies in aquatic ecology through a systematic review; (ii) discuss the replicability and reproducibility of the most prominent experiments in aquatic ecology and (iii) quantify the global effect of biodiversity on the functioning of continental aquatic ecosystems through a meta-analysis. In general, the themes addressed experimentally in aquatic ecology are quite diverse and dynamic over time. In the first decades there was an increase in the number of new topics developed through experiments. In recent decades, researchers have sought to focus mainly on replicating the different dimensions of ecological questions that were initially tested. It is important to note, however, that the confirmation or not of the original results of the experiments in aquatic ecology occurs at different levels of secondary replication. Exact replications, for example, do not exist, since there is always, to some degree, heterogeneity between studies. On the other hand, in general, the original questions replicated can be generalized to other organisms and ecosystems. However, at the same time it is necessary caution when interpreting generalizations in nature, due to the different conditions of heterogeneity that the experiments are manipulated. Although it is known that biodiversity improves the functioning of ecosystems, due to several experimental evidences that corroborate this premise, given the different experimental conditions that a given hypothesis test of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning may occur, the effect of this relationship may be overestimated or underestimated when jointly comparing individual results in a meta analytical synthesis. In general terms, the ecological issues addressed in the experiments are replicated at different levels, considering different conceptual and methodological approaches to reproduce similar results and search for ecological patterns.