That is what niche theory is all about, and as I posted before, these ranges
do not have sharp boundaries. That is why I proposed the idea of a fuzzy
niche. Some temperatures , for example, are highly suitable for an organsim,
so the membership in the niche is 1. Some are impossible, and the membership
is zero. In between you have marginal conditions with memberships taking an
intermediate value.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne Tyson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, August 08, 2009 6:13 AM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Fuzzy Logic in Ecology
Imagine you have an organism and a habitat. You can sketch out that
organism's "center" (more or less), its suite of needs or requirements and
limitations like temperature, pH, nutrients, water, and a thousand other
things that germplasm is heir to about which we know nothing, and you can
do the same for its habitat.
Then imagine that you can do the same for species, populations, and
ecosystems.
Given the impossibility of handling all of the known variables, not to
mention the unknown ones, and the variables within the variables, what
choices to ecologists have with respect to understanding how ecosystems
function and malfunction and how are they limited?
WT
