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Fifty Years of Fundamental Ecology in Russia: Quantitative Insight into the Thematic Structure of Studies

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Abstract—

The present study analyzed trends in the thematic scope of Russian ecological publications over the period from 1970 to 2019 with the use of the journal Ecology (Russian Journal of Ecology) as a case study. The content of each publication was evaluated via expert appraisal based on its correspondence to the organizational levels of living matter (organism, population, species, community, and ecosystem). Ecology in Russia and internationally was shown to be a species-centric or even organism-centric science. From 2003 onward, however, the thematic orientation of ecology has shifted significantly toward an increase in interest in populations and communities as opposed to species. By contrast, ecosystem studies constitute only a small percentage of all publications throughout the study period. Despite some distinctive features of the historical development of ecology in the Soviet Union (ideological pressure), the developmental trends in Russian ecology were essentially the same as those on the global scale. It can be concluded that systemic ideas have not been widely adopted in modern ecology as a whole. This is likely to be one of the reasons for a distorted public perception of ecology.

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Notes

  1. A list of journals in the Appendix of the cited article by Carmel et al. (2013) includes Soviet Journal of Ecology. This journal is unknown. Therefore, it appears to be the journal Ekologiya (Russian Journal of Ecology) analyzed in the present article.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project no. 18-011-00733).

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  1. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, St. Petersburg Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 199034, St. Petersburg, Russia

    A. L. Rizhinashvili

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  1. A. L. Rizhinashvili
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Correspondence to A. L. Rizhinashvili.

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Translated by E. Kuznetsova

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Rizhinashvili, A.L. Fifty Years of Fundamental Ecology in Russia: Quantitative Insight into the Thematic Structure of Studies. Biol Bull Rev 10, 551–559 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079086420060043

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