ABSTRACT
Ecological research and its application to environmental affairs often pose challenges that are beyond the reach of individual scientists. As a result, in ecology, collaboration has become a distinguishing feature of the organization and process of research. In environmental science, collaboration would be structured not in terms of disciplines, but as required by practical environmental challenges. Formation of this profession therefore illustrated how these challenges required collaboration of diverse forms of expertise. The implications of environmental problems for collaborative research also provide an opportunity to examine how broader ideas regarding science and policy have influenced collaboration. Collaborative research in ecology exhibits several of the patterns evident in other areas of science, including the assembly within research programmes of heterogeneous mixes of motivations, objectives, forms of knowledge and products. The ecologists have made a special effort to assert a distinctive view of how nature is organized, as part of their efforts to assert the identity of their discipline.
