Editing Theoretical ecology (section)

==Evolutionary ecology==
{{Main|Evolutionary ecology}}

The British biologist [[Alfred Russel Wallace]] is best known for independently proposing a theory of [[evolution]] due to [[natural selection]] that prompted [[Charles Darwin]] to publish his own theory. In his famous 1858 paper, Wallace proposed natural selection as a kind of feedback mechanism which keeps species and varieties adapted to their environment.<ref name="Unfinished Business"/>

<blockquote>''The action of this principle is exactly like that of the [[centrifugal governor]] of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident; and in like manner no unbalanced deficiency in the animal kingdom can ever reach any conspicuous magnitude, because it would make itself felt at the very first step, by rendering existence difficult and extinction almost sure soon to follow.''<ref name="tendency">{{cite web|last=Wallace|first=Alfred|title=On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type|url=http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S043.htm|publisher=The Alfred Russel Wallace Page hosted by [[Western Kentucky University]]|access-date=2007-04-22}}</ref></blockquote>

The [[cybernetics|cybernetician]] and anthropologist [[Gregory Bateson]] observed in the 1970s that, though writing it only as an example, Wallace had "probably said the most powerful thing that’d been said in the 19th Century".<ref>{{cite web|last=Brand|first=Stewart|title=For God's Sake, Margaret|url=http://www.oikos.org/forgod.htm|publisher=CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976|access-date=2007-04-04}}</ref> Subsequently, the connection between natural selection and [[systems theory]] has become an area of active research.<ref name="Unfinished Business">{{cite web|last=Smith|first=Charles H.|title=Wallace's Unfinished Business|url=http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/essays/UNFIN.htm|publisher=Complexity (publisher Wiley Periodicals, Inc.) Volume 10, No 2, 2004|access-date=2007-05-11}}</ref>