Many ecologists have lamented the demise of natural history and have attributed this decline to a misguided view that natural history is outdated and unscientific. Although there is a perception that the focus in ecology and conservation have shifted away from descriptive natural history research and training toward hypothetico-deductive research, we argue that natural history has entered a new phase that we call “next-generation natural history.” This renaissance of natural history is characterized by technological and statistical advances that aid in collecting detailed observations systematically over broad spatial and temporal extents. The technological advances that have increased exponentially in the last decade include electronic sensors such as camera-traps and acoustic recorders, aircraft- and satellite-based remote sensing, animal-borne biologgers, genetics and genomics methods, and community science programs. Advances in statistics and computation have aided in analyzing a growing quantity of observations to reveal patterns in nature. These robust next-generation natural history datasets have transformed the anecdotal perception of natural history observations into systematically collected observations that collectively constitute the foundation for hypothetico-deductive research and can be leveraged and applied to conservation and management. These advances are encouraging scientists to conduct and embrace detailed descriptions of nature that remain a critically important component of the scientific endeavor. Finally, these next-generation natural history observations are engaging scientists and non-scientists alike with new documentations of the wonders of nature. Thus, we celebrate next-generation natural history for encouraging people to experience nature directly

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下一代自然历史的迅速崛起

许多生态学家对自然历史的消亡感到遗憾，并将这种衰落归因于一种错误的观点，即自然历史已经过时且不科学。尽管有人认为生态学和保护的重点已经从描述性自然历史研究和培训转向假设演绎研究，但我们认为自然历史已经进入了一个我们称之为“下一代自然历史”的新阶段。自然历史的复兴以技术和统计进步为特征，这些进步有助于系统地收集广泛的空间和时间范围内的详细观察结果。在过去十年中呈指数级增长的技术进步包括电子传感器，例如相机陷阱和录音机、基于飞机和卫星的遥感、动物源性生物记录器、遗传学和基因组学方法以及社区科学计划。统计和计算的进步有助于分析越来越多的观察结果以揭示自然界的模式。这些强大的下一代自然历史数据集已将自然历史观察的轶事感知转变为系统收集的观察结果，这些观察结果共同构成了假设演绎研究的基础，并可用于保护和管理。这些进步正在鼓励科学家进行和接受对自然的详细描述，这仍然是科学努力的一个至关重要的组成部分。最后，这些下一代自然历史观察使科学家和非科学家都参与了关于自然奇观的新记录。