Emerging Network-Based Tools in Movement Ecology

New technologies have vastly increased the available data on animal movement and behaviour. Consequently, new methods deciphering the spatial and temporal interactions between individuals and their environments are vital. Network analyses offer a powerful suite of tools to disentangle the complexity within these dynamic systems, and we review these tools, their application, and how they have generated new ecological and behavioural insights. We suggest that network theory can be used to model and predict the influence of ecological and environmental parameters on animal movement, focusing on spatial and social connectivity, with fundamental implications for conservation. Refining how we construct and randomise spatial networks at different temporal scales will help to establish network theory as a prominent, hypothesis-generating tool in movement ecology

The Design of Free-Market Economies in a Post-Neoclassical World

The ‘Washington Consensus’ supporting competitive frames and market solutions in economics and law was shown inadequate to address social problems in non-U.S. settings. So would diversity and dynamics suggest theories in need of adjustment to other realities such as culture, increasing returns and market power. Reform must account for an economics of falling cost, ecological limits and complementarity in our relations. Such shall open new applications for economics and law. In this paper a theory of planning horizons is introduced and then employed to raise some meaningful questions about the neoclassical view with respect to its substitution, decreasing returns and independence assumptions. Suppositions of complementarity, increasing returns and interdependence suggest that competition is inefficient by upholding a myopic culture resistant to change. Growth – though long believed to rise from markets and competitive values – may not derive from these sources. Instead, as civilizations advance, shifting from material wants to higher-order intangible output, they evolve from market tradeoffs (substitution and scarcity) into realms of common need (complementarity and abundance). If so, then neoclassical arguments shall no longer apply to any advanced information economy also restrained by its ecology. Indeed, this paper opens standard theory into a more general framework constructing ‘horizon effects’ into a case for cooperation – as more efficient than competition for all long-term problems of growth. The case is made that competition is keeping us stupid and immature, rewarding a myopic culture at the expense of learning and trust, therefore retarding economic growth instead of encouraging it as believed. The policy implications of horizonal theory are explored, with respect to regulatory aims and economic concerns. Such an approach emphasizes strict constraints against entry barriers, ecological harm, market power abuse and ethical lapses. Social cohesion – not competition – is sought as a means to extend horizons and thereby increase efficiency, equity and ecological health. The overriding importance of horizon effects for regulatory assessment dominates other orthodox standards in economics and law. In sum, much of the reason for the failure of the Washington Consensus stems from myopic concerns central to any horizonal view. Reframing economics along horizonal lines suggests some meaningful insight to how regulations should be designed to keep pace with this approach in economics and law

Needed : an ethics and ideology for spaceship Earth

This target article summarizes our discourse on one of the major questions raised in our recent book “Evolution Science and Ethics in the Third Millennium,” namely, to what degree are traditional religious belief systems and modern secular ideologies capable of contributing to an evolutionarily based ethical framework that can guide humanity to higher levels of hominization within the context of a further progressing modernization and a sustainable planetary ecology? The article concludes with some reflections on the need for interfaith dialogue and the possibility of integrating traditional religious belief systems and modern secular ideologies into a long-term evolutionarily based ethical approach