Stochasticty, nonlinearity and instability in biological invasions

Abstract

Compared with other sciences ecology has few general theories that can be applied to predict the dynamics of its systems from first principles. This is perhaps not surprising given the huge variability of ecological systems. A number of broad insights have emerged, however, and one of the most important of these is that predicting the dynamics of ecological systems requires that we understand the interplay of two kinds of processes, stochastic and deterministic (Lewontin and Cohen 1968; May 1973; Lande et al, 2003). This conclusion is essentially a consensus resulting from a great deal of debate in the ecological literature, dating back to the 1950s (e.g., Andrewartha and Birch 1954,Nicholson 1954; Hassell 1986; White 2001). © 2006 Springer. All Rights Reserved.