METAANALYSIS - SYNTHESIZING RESEARCH FINDINGS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

The growing number of empirical studies performed in ecology and evolu tion creates a need for quantitative summaries of research domains to generate higher-order conclusions about general trends and patterns. R ecent developments in meta-analysis (the area of statistics that is de signed for summarizing and analyzing multiple independent studies) hav e opened up new and exciting possibilities. Unlike more traditional qu alitative and narrative reviews, meta-analysis allows powerful quantit ative analyses of the magnitude of effects and has a high degree of ob jectivity because it is based on a standardized set of statistical pro cedures. The first pioneering applications in ecology and evolution de monstrate that meta-analysis is both tractable and powerful.