생태학 입문서

Most ocean ecosystems can be divided into five levels.

Level 0 — Energy sources. Produces light, chemistry, radiation, or electric current. Examples: the sun, hydrothermal vents.

Level 1 — Primary producers Consume energy from level 0 to produce biomass. About 1% of energy is captured into biomass. Examples: plankton, coral.

Level 2 — Foragers Consume level 1 organisms, capturing about 10% of Level 1's energy. Examples: small fish, baleen whales, Strader 6 hivers

Level 3 — Carnivores Consume Level 2 organisms, capturing about 10% of Level 2's energy. Examples: squid, barracuda, Boreal 9 arachnid poachers

Level 4 — Apex predators Carnivores who are not preyed upon by any other carnivore in normal circumstances. Examples: saltwater crocodile, 4546b sea dragon, Nyos sphyx

Basement — Detritivores and recyclers This special level is reserved for organisms that feed on decaying matter, extracting energy from the leftovers of other levels. Examples: Strader 6 fungus gardeners

Organisms can operate on more than one level. Humans, for example, are both foragers and carnivores. Parasites are excluded because their ecological niche is purely subtractive.

The golden rule of ecosystems is that energy can only flow up. If any level of an ecosystem grows too large, it will destroy the level below, starving itself and levels above. The result is a die-back. Predators help manage this tendency, serving as 'executives of the wild'—stabilizing the ecosystem simply by pursuing their self-interest.

Modern science has unified ecology and economics into the Lotka-Volterra-Goodwin logistic principle, which asserts that a cycle of self-regulating inequality (governed by competition for resource access) is the natural state of all living systems. Ecosystems will naturally maximize their energy capture and complexity. It is the right and purpose of each level of the system to drive this process through constant adaptation and innovation, extracting more energy from the level below while fighting off the level above. When one level grows too strong, the level above grows stronger too, triggering feedback through increased predation and exploitation that ultimately corrects the entire system.

Legal theorists are now working to enshrine this cycle of boom and collapse into transgov law as a fundamental right of organized systems.