| Ecologists study various types of structure that define the sub-disciplines within the field at large. The idea of biomes emerged in the early 20 th century in an attempt to deal with fauna interacting with flora to generate large scale coherent biotic patterns. In the 1930s the processes associated with the idea of biome were cleaved into process-functional ecosystems (networks of energy and material flows) on the one hand, and community and population processes on the other. Thus stranded, the concept of biome degenerated into categories for simple description of large tracts of landscape.; The concept of dynamic attractors emerged around this same time in genetic landscapes and cybernetic systems. The notion of attractor is employed in this thesis to resuscitate the biome as a dynamical system requiring its own criteria for assessment. This allows moving beyond simple descriptive purposes to speak of biome emergence, collapse, and change between biome attractors. Although Pleistocene researchers continued to use biome concepts productively, ecologists generally abandoned any intellectual substance associated with the term. Pleistocene scientists research the special case of biome collapse and extinction, but, with their focus on populations and landscape features, do not do justice to the whole larger conception. This thesis uses the arena of megafaunal extinction to take seriously the notion of biome attractors. Considering biomes as the products of dynamical biome attractors can explain the Pleistocene extinctions, extinctions on islands after human colonization, and the current loss of species worldwide. Understanding how a stable biome can disintegrate following the disruption of its attractor explains how and why extinctions occur in a manner that allows us to overcome the limitations of conventional mechanistic explanations. The attractor concept allows discussion to rise above, and integrate more effectively, the reductionist, normal science approaches used to deal with ancient landscapes, fauna, and flora. Thus validated, the biome attractor is employed at the end of this thesis to consider agricultural landscapes and systems as agrobiomes (as opposed to agroecosystems). This raises the pressing issue of a contemporary global collapse of the prevailing agrobiome system due to climate change. |
