Taking the time: Ecological patterns revealed in long-term studies

Mary Talbot studied the natural history of ants for 26 years at the E. S. George Reserve in Michigan. The contribution to ecological understanding from long-term studies like this are unparalleled and widely recognized, but such studies remain rare. I give some examples of how long-term, well-documented studies have yielded insights that would have been impossible to gather from short-term studies. I discuss ideas on how to “play the long game” with our ecological data.