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One open review comments to “Bringing Life to Ocean Observations”
I enjoyed reading this paper and I think it gives a nice description of some of the legacies of the Census of Marine Life. One comment though: On page 7, you stated that your Question 1 (What is an oceanic ecosystem?) is answered by knowing where a set of organisms travels and what conditions they experience. I think you could tell something about the ecological niche that each species occupies by knowing where it travels, but cannot define an ecosystem by knowing the location of the “hotspots” for feeding, breeding, raising young, etc. There are a variety of definitions of ecosystems in the literature and on the Web, but none are so narrow that you could define an ecosystem by knowing only the information available from tags. Maybe you could expand this section a bit more to write more about what defines an ecosystem and how data from tagged animals can help define ecosystems in a way that is helpful for scientific understanding and management. (My bias is that ecosystems can’t really be delineated, but that there are overlapping and interacting biogeographical provinces.)
I enjoyed reading this paper and I think it gives a nice description of some of the legacies of the Census of Marine Life. One comment though: On page 7, you stated that your Question 1 (What is an oceanic ecosystem?) is answered by knowing where a set of organisms travels and what conditions they experience. I think you could tell something about the ecological niche that each species occupies by knowing where it travels, but cannot define an ecosystem by knowing the location of the “hotspots” for feeding, breeding, raising young, etc. There are a variety of definitions of ecosystems in the literature and on the Web, but none are so narrow that you could define an ecosystem by knowing only the information available from tags. Maybe you could expand this section a bit more to write more about what defines an ecosystem and how data from tagged animals can help define ecosystems in a way that is helpful for scientific understanding and management. (My bias is that ecosystems can’t really be delineated, but that there are overlapping and interacting biogeographical provinces.)