9.1 Ecological Investigation and Modelling The field of Systems
Ecology (e.g., Swartzman, 1979 and Larkin and Gazey, 1982) takes
advantage of current powerful mathematical tools and computing
technology to model complex ecological systems as mathematical
analogues that are intended to preserve the main features of the
system being modelled. After a decade or so of this kind of
work, a greater understanding of the capabilities and
limitations of this approach is now available, and if anything,
we are led back to simpler, more robust empirical approaches to
food web modelling (see Larkin and Gazey, 1982). A variety of
computer models of marine food webs, or at least of trophically
interlinked food web components, have been developed. Many of
these are complex and are rarely usable in an ‘off the shelf’
fashion without considerable effort in estimating population
parameters, but most of them attempt to build up a picture of
the consequences of the flow of material or information at a
system level, by assembling