PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #2: Thermodynamics and Complexity. Presiding: T. Allen.
Monday, August 6, 2001. 8:00 AM to 11:45 AM. Madison Ballroom D.
Thermodynamics and resource quality in beaver spatiotemporal dynamics.
Little, Amanda1, Allen, Timothy1, 1
ABSTRACT- Recent thermodynamic insights into system organizational development use a two-phase hierarchical model described by its complexity and complicatedness. An increase in complexity depends on energy gradients and is an increase in hierarchical depth that adds levels of constraint. An increase in complicatedness is an increase in the number of components at one level, but can be seen as a pair of complexifications at a lower level of analysis. The model's initial complexification phase is a self-organization based on a high quality resource gradient. With resource scarcity, the system enters the second complexification that degrades the low quality resource to a greater extent with increased efficiency. This phase expands upscale, expending more energy in organization to capture a diminishing resource. This dissipation vs degradation model explains beaver (Castor canadensis) spatiotemporal dynamics, much of which has been described in the literature but not explicitly linked across scales. For example, at the individual level, beaver consume highly digestible aquatic macrophytes and shrubs in summer, but with decreasing fall food availability they harvest and store lower quality woody food from a larger area for winter consumption. Beaver are caecotrophic, and decreased food nutrient content increases caecotrophe enrichment (digestive degradation) in the order Rodentia. The thermodynamic model will be explored and predictions suggested at beaver individual, territory, and population dynamical scalar levels. Thermodynamic explanations have widespread application helpful in solving management timing and scaling problems.
KEY WORDS: thermodynamics, complexity, castor canadensis, resources