Have the patience to try and understand what another specialist means and be inquisitive and respectful. That is the core of the interdisciplinary approach of aquatic ecologist Marten Scheffer, to which the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research will award the most prestigious Dutch prize in science on 29 November: the Spinoza Prize.

Scheffer is constantly cooperating with researchers from other disciplines. “You have to, as it is impossible to penetrate climate research of an entire ecosystem within a few years. The thing is, though, to do your homework well and understand the basis of other disciplines. The jargon and way of thinking among social scientists and economists, for example, is very different. It requires a lot of patience to understand one another, and it only works if you like and respect those people. In fact, you have to become friends and be modest about one’s own discipline. Big egos who know exactly how everything works are bad at cooperating,” says the professor who likes letting his colleagues share in the honor. His research group of thirty people is the only university group in the Netherlands that addresses aquatic ecology and water quality. “Each and every one of them is very talented and they manage very well without me, which allows me the freedom to discover new paths.”
If it takes so much patience to cooperate with other disciplines, Scheffer is bound to work long hours. “No, I have worked four days per week during most of my career and I never work in the evening or weekend. I need time for music and for my children of 9 and 11. I do carry a note book with me, though. Science does not let go of you, it’s always around. And another thing I do is work very intensively. I like the pressure cooker principle: a group of people retreats to an island for a number of days to work on a specific problem very intensively.”

Most cited
Scheffer carried out an influential study in which he demonstrated that lakes have two alternative equilibrium states: clear, with aquatic plants and cloudy, with algae. This theory also forms the basis for a new management strategy in which the fish population is temporarily diminished to convert lakes from a murky situation with cyanobacteria to a state of clear water and high biodiversity. Together with other biologists, he subsequently showed that seemingly stable ecosystems such as coral reefs and savannas can suddenly shift toward a totally different situation: his article Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems in Nature in 2001 has meanwhile become one of the world’s most cited articles.
He has now extended his research toward the fragility of societies. Together with the sociologist Frances Westley and the economist William Brock, he is developing a theory that shows the biggest socio-economic barriers for sustainable use of natural resources. The theory also explains why societies systematically respond too late to new problems and why opinions and attitudes in societies can suddenly shift after all.
Scheffer’s horizon appears to be limitless. In addition to being active in climate science, he is also pioneering in the area of food web ecology, which applies itself toward the connections among different food chains. He explains the complex dynamics of plankton communities with surprisingly simple models. Yet another research line of the multifaceted scientists concerns facilitation: plants can have mutual positive effects in natural vegetation. This is an insight which he has managed – again together with others - to unite with the seemingly contradictory paradigm that competition determines the development of vegetations. This approach is helping to solve a conflict between various directions in ecology.

Universal warning signals
The Spinoza Prize will bring Scheffer 2.5 million euros which he can freely spend on research in the next five years. What is he going to spend it on? “We are currently working on identifying universal warning signals that announce sudden changes in a system and for example can predict phenomena as diverse as climate changes and epilepsy attacks. I would like to explore that with for example the medical profession and economists.” Earlier this year, one of Scheffer’s Ph.D. students, in an article in PNAS, showed that eight sudden climate changes in earth’s history were preceded by generic early warning signals.
Scheffer also wants to work on a different view of evolution and the old question as to how it is possible that there are so many species on this planet. The classical theory states that each species has its own niche. Together with colleague Egbert van Nes, Scheffer came up with a radical theory that suggests that there are two ways for species to coexist: be sufficiently different, or by contrast, be similar enough. “You see the same thing in the economy: groups of small companies that coexist and all make more of the same.”

Source: Wageningen update 3/09, Albert Sikkema