 Philosophers have started to remedy the neglect of ecology and a number of major books have appeared (Cooper 2003, Ginzburg and Colyvan 2004, Sarkar 2005, MacLaurin and Sterelny 2008). The discussions have focused on several topics including the complicated and sometimes troubled relationship between mathematical models and empirical data in ecology (Shrader-Frechette &amp; McCoy 1993; Ginzburg and Colyvan 2004; Odenbaugh 2005; Weisberg 2012), whether there are distinctive ecological laws (Cooper 2003; Mikkelson 2003; Lange 2005; Eliot 2011b, Linquist et. al. 2016), the nature and reality of ecological communities and ecosystems (Sterelny 2006; Odenbaugh 2007; Eliot 2011), the “robustness“ of ecological principles (Odenbaugh 2003; Weisberg &amp; Reisman 2008; Justus 2012), the idea of ecological stability and the “balance of nature” (Odenbaugh 2001; Cooper 2003; Mikkelson 2001; Justus 2008), the definition of biodiversity (Sarkar 2005; MacLaurin and Sterelny 2008; Santana 2014), and the relationship between ecology and conservation biology (Linquist 2008). Recently, there has been interesting work done on functions in ecology as well (Jax, 2005; Odenbaugh 2010; Nunes-Neto et. al. 2014; Dussault &amp; Bouchard 2017). Most ecologists and evolutionary biologists do not think communities or ecosystems are units of selection, and thus the selected-effects account of functions does not readily apply. So, philosophers of ecology have been exploring alternatives. 