Metabiotic Ecology

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Lewis</div> <bR> <div> I define meta-biotic ecology as a systems based framework that is concerned with the co-evolutionary counter-adaptations and the dynamic inter-relational patterning of biotic life-forms, or systems components with one another upon different levels, at the levels of individual con-specific and inter-specific relationship, and population level of species density, pattern of variation and change, as well as the patterning of biotic/a-biotic relationship and interaction that occurs within the same general frameworks and having a consequence upon both biotic and a-biotic factors.</div> <bR> <div> The adoption of a meta-biotic framework to ecology is not just an affirmation of a holistic systems based approach to ecological patterning, but it represents the effort to transcend and dialectically embrace the analytic-synthetic distinction within the ecological framework, with recognition that the holistic systems based frame of reference is vital and necessary to any complete ecology, as long as it can sufficient embrace and account for the total range of analytical units that occur within the natural field represented by the framework.</div> <div> All earthbound ecological systems are open in the sense that they depend upon and interact with external a-biotic and other biotic ecosystems in terms of regular in-puts and outputs. Even macroscopic, large scale biotic systems, with regimes of great stability and very  long duration, may be said to eventually produce in a consistent manner certain kinds of out-puts that may, in the long run, result in basic environmental shifts that may alter the basis for that bio-system in first place. Thus, the long-term outputs of any large scale system, no matter how heterogeneous, may lead to consistent results and long-lasting consequences that shifts the general balance away from a foundation for favorable adaptation toward a less favorable regime--the consequence may be that any biotic system in the long run may be sowing the seeds for its own demise and long-term extinction, both by traipsing down a limb of over-specialization, and simultaneously, causing gradual shifts in biotic-a-biotic relations, or in meta-biotic frameworks, that seriously challenge its capacity for continued success. In the hyper-adaptation of any highly compartmentalized meta-biotic system, we may find the disease occurring at the very roots of the entire system, eventually depriving itself of the most basic components of which such a system depends.</div> <bR> <div> Living systems, including human systems, have very limited long-range planning capacities, and indeed function primarily on vary myopic and short-range strategies of adaptation. Long range strategies of adaptation are almost invariably achieved as the product of extended and elaborative evolutionary development, as a consequence of natural selection and the process of genetic-phenotypic trail and error that goes on daily and endless in the imperceptible minutia of the background. Even this process of trail and error is largely random and a product of happenstance, it is blind and non-purposive, except possibly in the sense that these components function within, are conditioned by, and respond to the systems frameworks of which they play a part, and this larger systems framework tends to function with some sense of finality and achievable equilibrium over the long run. The terms set down for adaptation by any kind of organism are largely factors defined within a larger meta-biotic framework of interactions and relationships between many different kinds of organisms.</div> <bR> <div> The pattern of response an organism achieves, largely guided by genetic controls, with mixed variability and by restricted ranges of patterned behavioral response, serve to set the limits and possibilities of niche and survival within the framework of a larger system. It is a complex and uncertain calculus of many variable differentials, without a clear-cut sense of the net out-comes for any specific adaptation or pattern of response. It is for this reason that the long-term record is marked more by extinction and transformation of species, from one form into another, with many cul-de-sacs, than by a continuous long-lived system represented by key prototypical kinds. It is probably impossible to say, upon any refined or fine tuned scale of calculation, when or whether not a particular species, represented well in the fossil record by index types, did not become suddenly extinct, or merely become transformed into some entirely new, but related, line. We find evidence for both processes occurring simultaneously, with the underlying dictum for all populations suggested--mutate out or die out.</div> <div> We might accept this most of the time except for the persistence of a few very long, and little changed species that appear to defy the very dynamics of evolutionary history, and as suggested here, of meta-biotic streamlining and shifting equilibrium. But I take these robust species to represent a kind of adaptive plateau of functional streamlining, form fitting almost perfectly functional requirements of general adaptation, with little other kind of requirement but for stabilizing selection to occur. These relative few species are more the exception to the rule, and if we see them as kinds of natural success stories, we can say that they may have defied and beaten the evolutionary odds. But even if we look at these kinds of species over the long-term, the shark, the cock roach, the ant, and at one time, the trilobite, we possibly find a long history of evolutionary drift and transformation of traits, perhaps about a central range of adaptation, marked by periods called by some "punctuated equilibrium."</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="1d24e350.png" border=0 width="78" height="53" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Sorry for the Inconvenience!</div> <bR> <div> <B>You have reached the current limit of our web-construction activities, please turn back and explore other avenues!</B></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="1d33e330.png" border=0 width="574" height="51" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  <script language="Javascript" src="https://seal.starfieldtech.com/getSeal?sealID=720039320071f8c61f12710b91e37cc117a4b091897591454247040"></script>  </div> <bR> <div>  <p align="center"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> s="na";c="na";j="na";f=""+escape(document.referrer) </script> <script language="javascript1.2" type="text/javascript"> s=screen.width;v=navigator.appName if (v != "Netscape") {c=screen.colorDepth} else {c=screen.pixelDepth} j=navigator.javaEnabled() </script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function pr(n) {document.write(n,"\n");} NS2Ch=0 if (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && navigator.appVersion.charAt(0) == "2") {NS2Ch=1} if (NS2Ch == 0) { r="&size="+s+"&colors="+c+"&referer="+f+"&java="+j+"" pr("<A HREF=\"http://www.TheCounter.com\" TARGET=\"_top\"><IMG"+ " BORDER=0 SRC=\"http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383"+r+"\"><\/A>")} </script> <NOSCRIPT> <a HREF="http://www.TheCounter.com" TARGET="_top"><img SRC="http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383" ALT="TC" BORDER="0" width="88" height="31"></a> </NOSCRIPT>   </div> <bR> <div>    </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>