Publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was the beginning of popular awareness of what happens when the balance of nature is upset. It has led to the study of how species inhabit an environment and what happens to those species when the environment is changed either naturally or, more usually, by Man. Most of us have heard news reports of what happens when an alien species is introduced into an environment where it has no natural checks against its growth: foxes and domestic cats in Australia are a couple of examples.

What it is

Study of how species inhabit the environment is known as Community Ecology. Researchers working in this area endeavour to describe the environment and the relationships between the animate and inanimate objects in the environment. Information about this subject can be found on the Oklahoma State University web-site.

Theories, Hypotheses, Methods, Ideas

A large number of theories, methods, hypotheses, and ideas are part of Community Ecology. Here is a list of a few of them:

• Ordination
• Niche Theory
• MacArthur-Wilson Island Biogeography
• Successional Theory
• Biodiversity
• Food Web Dynamics
• Gradient Analysis
• Cluster Analysis
• Resonance Ratio Analysis

Most recent addition to this list is Stephen P. Hubbell's Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity & Biogeography, (Princeton, 2001). For a readable explanation of this see Oliver Baker's article Law of the Jungle that appeared in New Scientist issue number 2329, page 28, on 9 February 2002.

Basic Question

A question that hasn't yet been answered fully is: Why does any quadrate¹ of the ecosystem contain the various species in the ratios present?

Hubbell seems to be close to getting an answer with the help of some fiendishly complex mathematical equations while ignoring biodiversity.

Another Model

After listening to an expert in Ordination and reading about Community Ecology in general it occured to Fu-Manchu that Object-Oriented computer Programming (OOP) could offer another more natural, more flexible way of modelling the ecosystem.

Entities in all their variety comprise an ecosystem. Each entity -- an object in OOP lingo -- draws resources from its environment, water, nutrients, minerals, other entities. Objects are pretty much anything that require inputs or outputs within the ecosystem.

Each object has inherent characteristics that it can pass to other instances of itself. Each object sends messages to and receives messages from other objects; anything can be considered a message. For example: A living creature receives a message by eating prey that it converts into energy and waste products that are sent as messages to its surroundings; it in turn can become prey ceasing to exist in one form, converted to energy and wastes products by another creature.

Programming languages

A number of object-oriented programming languages exist. C++ is a bit sloppy and cumbersome; Smalltalk is another; Ada is the most rigorous language and one that has been validated.

Distributed Processing

Computer processing power is less of a problem today. In particular processing can be distributed to computers connected to the Internet anywhere in the world. An example of distributed processing is the SETI screen-saver. United Devices has succeeded in deploying distributed processing solutions that can grow to meet the processing needs of a project.

Simple Beginnings

Object-oriented modelling of Community Ecology can have a simple beginning in the middle and work outwards to ever increasing complexity. For example: You could start with a single ant, working outwards as your understanding of the ants improves, to the colony as a whole and beyond.

A soil scientist could be working on a description of the soil in which your ants live; this model could then be connected with the model of the ant colony.

A biologist working on the way plants absorb minerals from the soil could make this description available for connection to the Community Ecology model.

And so it goes. From simple beginnings the model would become exceedingly complex.

Consilience

Object-orinted modelling of Community Ecology appears to offer a large step towards consilience across the various scientific disciplines; ultimately it could be all encompassing. Concept of consilience is described by Edward O. Wilson in his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (Knopf, 1998).

MOAB

A quick drag through the Internet using the terms Community Ecology and Object Oriented revealed that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has been experimenting with OOP modelling techniques since early 1997 at least, to create their Model of Animal Behaviour (MOAB).

With it the user can create simulation models of medium and small sized mammal movement in regions where the interaction of terrestrial animals and landscape are important. MOAB has built-in flexibility, allowing it to be adapted for modeling terrestrial animal foraging behavior and nest depredation in different ecosystems, modeling four different species simultaneously. MOAB has a graphical user interface, the ability to import and export maps of resources and habitat. It was created to provide a general tool for community ecologists interested in modeling the influence of landscape pattern on animal movement and foraging.

Conclusion

Object-orintented modelling of Community Ecology has potential to be an interesting pursuit. It could bring a large number of isolated disciplines together.