Blaming the words "population" and "community" has outlived its usefulness in ecology - A reply to magnusson (2013)

Abstract

This is an accompanying commentary on the paper by William Magnusson which proposes that the words "population" and "community" should be avoided by ecologists because they impair communication and scientific progress. This reasoning rests on a weak assumption that words with multiple meanings are a linguistic anomaly and cause a lack of progress in ecology and that there are absolute, context-free prescriptions on the use of terminology. We propose that scientists generally know how to address words with multiple meanings, and use them as far as they are useful, and, usually, but not always in their appropriate domains or contexts. In fact, the terms "population" and "community" have been increasingly used and currently occur in two thirds of published papers in leading ecology journals. © 2013 ABECO.