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The Empty NicheEcologists are a very religious group, fundamentalist to the core. Once the gospel has been set down, they follow it to the end of time. An example of this is the concept of the niche, as laid out by G. Evelyn Hutchinson. He associated the niche with individual species, so since he did not discuss the concept of a niche without a species to fill it, the concept of an empty niche has become a modern heresy, blasphemous to the true believer. I ran afoul of this doctrine when I was working on niche packing, because the empty niche is an obvious and useful concept. If you have a stable ecosystem, and one of the species suddenly vanishes (pollution, hunting, etc.), then something will eventually come to take its place. How better to visualise this than by saying that it vacates a niche which remains to be filled? Alas, it is not for mere mortals, especially theorists, to question the wisdom of the gods. Even when I suggest generalising the theory of the niche, which Hutchinson defined as a set in hyperspace (jargon is imprtant too), to include fuzzy sets (that is to say, get rid of the sharp and precise boundaries of the Hutchinsonian niche), I am sometimes accused of trying to corrupt the pure gospel of ecology. If you want to be corrupted, you can read more about this idea here. |
Developed and maintained by William Silvert. |