Diversity and Stability in Food-Webs

Posted by Tom Carter on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Diversity-and-Stability-in-Food-Webs-tp520801p520809.html

All -

   I'm very much with Ray on this . . . seems like too much of "If  
THIS were the problem, then THAT would be the solution" and maybe not  
enough of "Is THIS really the problem?"  On that note, I'll just  
mention that we've experienced a collapsing of terms and/or  
concepts . . . people talk about "computer security" when often they  
mean "computer reliability."  A system can be secure as all get out,  
and still be completely unreliable, and vice versa . . .    (And, or  
course, I'll mumble my slogan, "Security is a feeling people might  
have, it's not a property a computer system can have"  :-)

   But also, back to the original prompting email, I've just been  
reading a fun little book -- "Ecological Orbits - How Planets Move  
and Populations Grow" . . .  I recommend it (although I don't  
necessarily agree with all of it).  The authors (Lev Ginzburg and  
Mark Colyvan) are pushing for a transition beyond the Lotka-Volterra  
regime of population modeling (their current fave is something they  
refer to as "maternal effects").  They argue that it's time for a  
"Newtonion revolution" in population modeling, largely in the sense  
that they think we should start using second order difference /  
differential systems in our (analytic) models.  For example,  
classical Lotka Volterra, while nonlinear (with "quadratic" terms) is  
still a first order system.  They argue that we should be looking  
more at the second derivative of population (i.e., rate of change of  
population growth rate) . . .

   Anyway, it's a fun, quick read . . .

tom

On Nov 9, 2005, at 3:47 PM, Raymond Parks wrote:

>    I suppose that everyone has a hot button that pushes them to  
> respond
> even when such response is inappropriate or unusual.  Mine is academic
> computer security researchers who, as a group, seem to be out of touch
> with the state of things in the wild.