Theory Meets Empiry: A Citation Network Analysis.

According to a recent survey, ecologists and evolutionary biologists feel that theoretical and empirical research should coexist in a tight feedback loop but believe that the two domains actually interact very little. We evaluate this perception using a citation network analysis for two data sets, representing the literature on sexual selection and speciation. Overall, 54%-60% of citations come from a paper's own category, whereas 17%-23% are citations across categories.