Abstract
Open questions: are the dynamics of ecological communities predictable?
Highlights
Einstein famously said that the ‘most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible’ [1]
All ecological communities are made up of large numbers of species that interact in myriad ways with each other. They can be conceptualized as dynamic systems where it may be necessary to describe the spatial location, age, sex, genotype or other properties of the individuals that comprise populations of different species [2]
Evolution means that the functions and parameters that describe the system’s behavior may change over time so that the ecological dynamics are embedded in a larger arena of evolutionary dynamics [3]
Summary
Einstein famously said that the ‘most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible’ [1]. All ecological communities are made up of large numbers of species that interact in myriad ways with each other. The historical and contingent nature of Darwinian evolution leads to a bewildering variety of forms of interaction, far beyond those observed in complex non-biological systems.
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