Chaos: An Ecological Reality?

Deterministic chaos has been studied extensively in various fields. Some of the ideas emerging out of these studies have been put to novel applications. However, it is unknown whether natural ecological systems support chaotic dynamics. There is no concrete evidence which suggests that ecosystem evolution is chaotic in certain situations. This is very intriguing because ecosystems do possess all the necessary qualifications to be able to support such a dynamical behavior. The present paper attempts to answer the above question with the help of a few systems modeling different but very common ecological situations. A new methodology for the analysis of a class of model ecological systems is presented. Simulation experiments suggest that natural terrestrial systems are not suitable candidates where one should look for chaos. Additionally, our study also points out that the failure of attempts to observe chaos in natural populations might have resulted because biological interactions are not conducive for such a behavior to be supported. The cause of these failures may not be the poor data quality or demerits in the analysis techniques.