How many steps to Kevin Bacon?
Oct.01, 2002, filed under Miscellany
The web of life may be even more tangled than we thought. Here is a relatively classic example of a representation of a food web (it comes from this page, which is a lot easier to read in the English version than the original Norwegian).
That is a model of a food web in Little Rock Lake, Wisconsin. The conclusion of this is that species are linked more closely than we thought, and this has obvious implications for sustaining biodiversity and the impact of habitat degradation. If species are, on average, only two degrees of separation apart, then no one species is really insignificant and we probably can’t afford to lose any of them if we want our life to continue is a way that is similar to that which we have now. Of course, you might be one of the ones who think we should all emigrate into space and live in low-G environments eating food cubes. In that case, it’s probably of no interest anyway and why are you reading this web site?
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
