Re: Species Selection Redux

From: Wirt Atmar (atmar_at_aics-research.com)
Date: 03/14/05 

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:02:07 -0500 (EST)

Jim writes:

> "Guy Hoelzer" <hoelzer@unr.edu> wrote in message news:
>
>>Do you recognize your claim that ecosystems don't have a fitness is an
>>assertion without empirical support? Many professionals (perhaps most
>>ecosystem scientists, for example) would disagree.
>
> So how would you define "fitness" as applied to ecosystems?

The standard measures of an ecosystem's integrity are its stabiility,
resiliency and invasibility. In that, these metrics are not unlike the
measures taken of a reproducing population on an adaptive topography and
whether or not it's near a deep local optimum. Both measures are
optimization metrics.

To get a sense of this literature, go to Google and type:

     lyapunov stability ecosystem

The ecosystems most resilient to insults and environmental shocks should
be the longest lived, and thus, in that sense, the most "fit" (the most
"appropriate" to the circumstances in which they find themselves).

Wirt Atmar

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