Replication studies: a win-win for early-career training and behavioral ecology

Abstract

As a community of researchers, behavioral ecologists work on a staggering diversity of animal systems and questions. Our goal is to build a series of generalizable hypotheses that can explain how and why animals do the things they do. But in order to fully delineate the boundaries and limitations of our hypotheses we need to replicate more. Most researchers generally agree that proper replication is necessary to ensure a firm foundation for our work, but lament that these studies can be hard to fund and even harder to publish. Here, we present a potential way forward: incorporating replication studies as part of standard research training for undergraduates and starting graduate students. We outline how these replication studies can be a positive pedagogical tool, providing training in research design, analysis and interpretation for early career researchers. Then we also introduce a new section of this journal, Replication Studies, which will publish close replications in short-format. Publishing more replication studies will shore up the foundations of our research and allow future evidence syntheses to uncover general patterns of animal behavior.