Ecological Complexity and Agroecology

273 Pages·2017·27.42 MB·English

by  John Vandermeer

Ecological Complexity
and Agroecology
This text refl ects the immense current growth in interest in agroecology and
changing approaches to it. While it is acknowledged that the science of ecology
should be the basis of agroecological planning, many analysts have out-of-date
ideas about contemporary ecology. Ecology has come a long way since the old
days of “the balance of nature” and other romantic notions of how ecological
systems function. In this context, the new science of complexity has become
extremely important in the modern science of ecology. The problem is that it
tends to be too mathematical and technical and thus off-putting for the average
student of agroecology, especially those new to the subject. Therefore this book
seeks to present ideas about ecological complexity with a minimum of formal
mathematics.
The book’s organization consists of an introductory chapter, and a second
chapter providing some of the background to basic ecological topics as they
are relevant to agroecosystems (e.g., soil biology and pest control). The core
of the book consists of seven chapters on key intersecting themes of ecological
complexity, including issues such as spatial patterns, network theory and tipping
points, illustrated by examples from agroecology and agricultural systems from
around the world.
John Vandermeer is Asa Gray Distinguished University Professor of Ecology
and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, USA.
Ivette Perfecto is George W. Pack Professor of Natural Resources and Envi-
ronment, University of Michigan, USA.

Ecological Complexity
and Agroecology
John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 J. Vandermeer and I. Perfecto
The right of J. Vandermeer and I. Perfecto to be identifi ed as authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vandermeer, John H., author. | Perfecto, Ivette, author.
Title: Ecological complexity and agroecology / by John Vandermeer and
Ivette Perfecto.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2017020043 | ISBN 9781138231962 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138231979 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315313696 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Agricultural ecology.
Classifi cation: LCC S589.7 .V359 2017 | DDC 577.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020043
ISBN: 978-1-138-23196-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-23197-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-31369-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Dedicated to the memory of Richard Levins

Contents
List of fi gures x
Preface xviii
1 Introduction 1
The idea of ecological complexity 2
Early revolutionaries in the new agriculture 7
To “understand”: nine reasons for generalization 12
A note on theory and intuition 14
Ecological complexity and the organization of this book 15
2 Basic ecological concepts 19
How plants get energy 19
How plants get nutrients from soil 24
Transformation of nutrients in the soil 27
Plants, soil and water 32
The ecological niche: a historical backbone 34
Population dynamics 39
Equilibrium, resilience, persistence 42
Basic trophic dynamics 47
Feedback in dynamic systems 50
3 The Turing mechanism and geometric pattern 60
Dynamic consequences of background exogenous pattern 64
Generation of endogenous pattern 69
Criticality and power functions 75
Percolation points and power functions 81
The skeleton of the fundamental niche, the fl esh of the realized niche 84
Spatial pattern and the agricultural connection 86
viii Contents
4 Chaos 89
Introduction 89
Intuition of the importance of chaos in a simple system 93
Farmer math and the intuition of chaos 95
Chaotic attractors, transients and Cantor sets 99
Ecological chaos in the real world? 103
The generalized structure of chaotic attractors 106
From cooked carrots to chaos to attractor reconstruction 110
Conclusions 113
5 Stochasticity 115
Introduction: deterministic versus stochastic 115
The importance of stochasticity 116
Basic population processes with stochasticity 119
Predator/prey systems and stochasticity 125
The interrelationship between chaos and stochasticity 127
The chaos/stochasticity tapestry 130
Final comments 134
6 Coupled oscillators 135
An odd kind of sympathy 135
Consumer/resource oscillators and weak coupling: a basic pattern 136
Oscillatory structure in chaos: the teacup 139
Confronting Gause’s principle with oscillations 140
Limiting similarity and species packing with oscillators 143
Decomposition as an oscillatory process 149
Seasonality and the Moran effect 152
7 Multidimensionality 157
Three-dimensional systems 158
Multidimensional systems 162
The promise of food webs 166
Qualitative structure of directed graphs – loop analysis 172
Concluding remarks 176
8 Trait-mediated indirect interactions 178
Density-mediated indirect interactions 179
Trait-mediated indirect interactions in principle: a basic nonlinearity 181
Trait-mediated effects in the real world 187
Contents ix
Consequences of trait-mediated indirect interactions 191
Hypernetworks 191
Multiple TMIIs 196
Summary 198
9 Critical transitions 200
Inevitability of surprise 200
Loss of biodiversity: expected or surprise? 201
Hysteresis on a global scale 205
The surprise of the coffee rust disease 208
Agricultural syndromes as hysteretic phenomena with tipping points 214
Basin boundary collisions: chaos and catastrophe 218
Summary 219
10 The “scientifi c” basis of agroecology 221
Complexity science and ecology 222
The four pillars of agroecology 224
The “whole” of agroecology 230
Solving farmers’ problems in the age of ecological complexity 231
The importance of thought-intensive technology 233
References 235
Index 247