In a sense, adaptation is action in response to learning. In recent years the term Adaptive Management has been used to describe an approach to making management decisions about complex systems, including ecosystems, which emphasizes conscious experimentation and learning.
Natural ecosystems are enormously complex.
Adaptive management begins with the assumption that we cannot know everything about an ecosystem. We may have some excellent information about parts of ecosystems and some good theories about the way they seem to work, but in order to maximize our learning about these systems we need to continually test these assumptions and theories. In Adaptive Management, each management action is based on an hypothesis, or theory about the way a system works. To test an hypothesis, you state what you are going to do, what you think will happen based on your present idea of how things work, and then review the results to see if things actually responded the way you expected. If they did not, you will need to evaluate why and adapt your ideas and future actions to fit your new level of understanding.