SYMP 9-4
Herding cats: Bringing social science into the research enterprise
Ecological research is by its very nature interdisciplinary. It requires interests, expertise and knowledge that exceed the grasp of any single individual. My own ecological research career has required integrating plant physiology, biochemistry, engineering, radiochemistry, virology, biocontrol of pests, insect systematics, insect physiology, insect behavior, bird behavior, functional genomics and more. Needless to say, I was not the master of most of those areas, but instead formed collaborative teams. That approach is the future of all of the sciences, not just ecology, as questions to answer and problems to address have grown ever larger and more complex. Science is now an interdisciplinary team sport, and not all teams are created equal. To be successful we now need to integrate expertise from the social sciences. Social scientists have been studying successful teams for some time and try to identify ‘assembly rules’, much as community ecologists do. They hypothesize that particular rules or traits characterize any kind of successful team, just as many ecologists seek a finite set of rules, laws or conditions that produce stable communities. The new and growing “science of team science” brings sociological and psychological research to bear on the problem of assembling effective teams. What they’ve learned can be used by ecologists in developing collaborations.
Results/Conclusions
Building a successful ecological research team requires using what some call “soft” criteria, including personality and behavioral traits, not just scientific expertise. Social interactions can be engineered to create collaborative teams, and to assess probability of success. The science of social networks is especially useful in optimizing collaborations. I will illustrate use of these approaches in the formation of a wide range of collaborative teams of varying sizes. Paying attention to “soft” criteria and balancing them against scientific expertise can help avoid painful and ineffective team efforts.