New mathematical studies of the interactions between oscillating
biological populations may shed light on some of the toughest
questions in ecology, including the number and types of species
in an ecosystem, according to an article in the December 2006
issue of BioScience. The article, by John Vandermeer of the
University of Michigan, shows how extensions of established
theory suggest that many animal and plant populations oscillate
in synchrony because of interactions such as predation and
competition. Such synchronization can have far-reaching effects.
Vandermeer suggests that several well-known biological
conundrums, such as the higher-than-expected diversity of
plankton in aquatic ecosystems, may be explained this way.
Physicists know that even a weak coupling between oscillating
systems can yield synchronized oscillations, a phenomenon that
was studied with pendulums by the seventeenth century Dutch
mathematician Christiaan Huygens. Biologists have only in recent
years started to explore the implications