Ecology is a basic science and related research is a basic theoretical research. What is basic theoretical research? To put it simply, it's about playing with theories, but not with developing technology. Of course, theoretical innovation is to prepare for technological research and the development, the former is the foundation of the latter, the two are interrelated, not contradictory. In basic theoretical research, theoretical innovation should be highlighted.In the study of the influencing factors behind a certain representation or the regulatory process, both the result and the reason need to be elaborated, focusing on the explanation of the reason, that is, the mechanism.

A paper based on basic theoretical research should not only be superficial. Example 1: Under the condition of inoculation/transplantation of biological soil crust, soil composition, nutrients, physical properties and microbial nutrients all showed significant changes. This is the representation, and this is only a part of our research. So what is the cause or driving process of this remarkable change? That's what we're doing. A paper only described by representations, like a man without a soul, is of no value. If there are influencing factors or driving processes that cause changes in key soil/microbial indices under crust conditions, then the focus should be on elaborating this process or factor, and carefully describing and systematically demonstrating it as a mechanism. Some students measure a lot of indicators, if in advance it is not distinguished which indicators are as a representation, which indicators as a mechanism, then it is necessary to think repeatedly after the event, how to distinguish. A high-level study, in some cases, starts with the mechanism, while with some phenotypic/representational indicators as a background. In some cases, it is not clear what the mechanism is? So it is necessary to carry out systematic observations and obtain a large number of indicators and data. In the process of observation and analysis, the representation and mechanism will gradually become clear.

Example two:Under the condition of inoculation of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPR) inoculation conditions, water use, growth and yield of plants were significantly increased, which was only a representation, but not a mechanism. Maqsood's research based on measurements of gas exchange parameters and chlorophyll content, strictly speaking, is only an appearance, not a mechanisms. In other words, Maqsood's paper has only the apparent work, not the mechanism. How to deal with these kind of problems?We can take water use, growth and yield as the appearance parameters, whereas consider gas exchange as the mechanism, and try to combine the appearance with the mechanism, but this is very far-fetched. Thirty or eventwenty years ago, such observations would have been available for publication, but now they are generally not accepted for publication. Over the past 15 years, new methods and techniques have been developed to a considerable extent to reveal crop water use and yield formation, such as specific reaction chains in the rhizosphere or the specific structure of mycelium and root symbionts. A simple statistical correlation analysis of other exchange parameters with crop yields was done 30 years ago.

How to initiate systematic observational research? First of all, we should read more literature. What are the representative journals, representative hypotheses, representative models, representative papers and representative authors in this field in the last 3, 5, or 10 years? What is important, what is unclear or even wrong? How to stand on the basis of predecessors to find the universal key scientific problems that affect the overall development of the whole discipline? How to carry out targeted design for this problem, obtain data, analyze data, and come up with new theoretical explanations? These questions are required by all students need to ask themselves repeatedly, and exercise them repeatedly.

The above mentioned description is the common problem among the students, please ask all the students to question themselves again and again.