Rule 6 Story-telling is dangerous. In attempting to explain ecological patterns or relationships, it is easy to slip into a make-believe world where every observation is readily explained by some ad hoc assertion-story-telling. The temptation to advance hypotheses as facts should be avoided at all costs Rule 7 There are hierarchies of explanations. For any observation there is often an immediate cause that can be diagnosed. Often this causal explanation is insufficiently informative and we need to probe deeper to reach a fuller grasp of the situation. Even if a and deeper explanations which allow us to see the henomenon is 'explained there may well be furthe fuller pictureRule 6 ‘Story-telling’ is dangerous. In attempting to explain ecological patterns or relationships, it is easy to slip into a make-believe world where every observation is readily explained by some ad hoc assertion – ‘story-telling’. The temptation to advance hypotheses as facts should be avoided at all costs. Rule 7 There are hierarchies of explanations. For any observation there is often an immediate cause that can be diagnosed. Often this causal explanation is insufficiently informative and we need to probe deeper to reach a fuller grasp of the situation. Even if a phenomenon is ‘explained’ there may well be further and deeper explanations which allow us to see the fuller picture