The future of systems ecology

Main Article Content

Deborah M. Gordon

Abstract

Question: What is the future of systems ecology in a rapidly changing world?


Contribution: Systems ecology can contribute by focusing on ecological systems in transformation and by extending systems thinking across biological scales.

Article Details

How to Cite
1.
Gordon DM. The future of systems ecology. Syst. Ecol. [Internet]. 2026 Sep. 27 [cited 2026 Sep. 29];1:002. Available from: https://systems-ecology.org/index.php/se/article/view/2194
Section
Editorials

References

Riskin, J. 2026. The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. New York: Riverhead Books.

Wulf, A. 2015. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Hammond, D. 2003. The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Haraway, D. J. 1976. Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Forrester, J. W. 1972. Industrial Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jørgensen, S. E. 2012. Introduction to Systems Ecology. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/b11877

Odum, H. T. 1983. Systems Ecology: An Introduction. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Evans, M. R., Norris, K. J., and Benton, T. G. 2012. Predictive ecology: systems approaches. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367(1586):163–169. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0191

Saavedra, S., and Kéfi, S. 2026. Open questions for systems ecology. Systems Ecology 1:001. https://doi.org/10.67837/2341

Armstrong McKay, D. I., et al. 2022. Exceeding 1.5 °C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points. Science 377(6611):eabn7950. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7950

Elsen, P. R., Saxon, E. C., Simmons, B. A., Ward, M., Williams, B. A., Grantham, H. S., Kark, S., Levin, N., Perez-Hammerle, K.-V., Reside, A. E., and Watson, J. E. M. 2022. Accelerated shifts in terrestrial life zones under rapid climate change. Global Change Biology 28:918–935. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15962

Sultan, S. E. 2015. Organism and Environment: Ecological Development, Niche Construction, and Adaptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587070.001.0001

Levins, R. 1993. A response to Orzack and Sober: formal analysis and the fluidity of science. The Quarterly Review of Biology 68(4):547–555. https://doi.org/10.1086/418302

Halabi, N., Rivoire, O., Leibler, S., and Ranganathan, R. 2009. Protein sectors: evolutionary units of three-dimensional structure. Cell 138(4):774–786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2009.07.038

Haeger, A., Wolf, K., Zegers, M. M., and Friedl, P. 2015. Collective cell migration: guidance principles and hierarchies. Trends in Cell Biology 25(9):556–566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcb.2015.06.003

Mayor, R., and Etienne-Manneville, S. 2016. The front and rear of collective cell migration. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 17:97–109. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm.2015.14

Gordon, D. M. 2016. From division of labor to the collective behavior of social insects. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 70:1101–1108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-2045-3

O’Brien, L. E. 2022. Tissue homeostasis and non-homeostasis: from cell life cycles to organ states. Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 38:395–418. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-cellbio-120420-114855

Bassett, D. S., and Bullmore, E. T. 2017. Small-world brain networks revisited. The Neuroscientist 23(5):499–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858416667720

Gordon, D. M. 2014. The ecology of collective behavior. PLOS Biology 12(3):e1001805. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001805

Gordon, D. M. 2023. The Ecology of Collective Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691232164

Bissell, M. J., and Inman, J. 2008. Reprogramming stem cells is a microenvironmental task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105(41):15637–15638. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0808457105

Paget, S. 1889. The distribution of secondary growths in cancer of the breast. The Lancet 1:571–573. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(00)49915-0

Fidler, I. J. 2003. The pathogenesis of cancer metastasis: the “seed and soil” hypothesis revisited. Nature Reviews Cancer 3:453–458. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1098

Noorbakhsh, J., Zhao, Z.-M., Russell, J. C., and Chuang, J. H. 2020. Treating cancer as an invasive species. Molecular Cancer Research 18(1):20–26. https://doi.org/10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-19-0262

Basanta, D., and Anderson, A. R. A. 2013. Exploiting ecological principles to better understand cancer progression and treatment. Interface Focus 3(4):20130020. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2013.0020

Adler, F. R. 2024. A modelling framework for cancer ecology and evolution. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 21:20240099. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2024.0099