Dept of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, UK CB2 3EJ.
Trends Ecol Evol. 1997 Feb;12(2):70-4. doi: 10.1016/s0169-5347(96)20103-x.
Many seemingly plausible mathematical models of small-scale ecological interactions predict the self-organisation of dynamic, coherent and large scale spatial patterns (e.g. spirals). If true, such patterns would have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. For the most part, however, empirical studies have not corroborated their existence, suggesting erroneous dynamics in the models, shortcomings in empirical methodology, or both. Arguments for categorically dismissing self-organized patterns have been based on their assumed sensitivity to symmetry-breaking stochastic noise. However, many plausible mechanisms for generating patterns are robust to noise, and consequently broken symmetry is insufficient grounds for dismissing these self-organized patterns.
许多看似合理的小规模生态相互作用的数学模型预测了动态、连贯和大规模空间模式（例如螺旋）的自组织。如果是这样，这些模式将具有重要的生态和进化意义。然而，在大多数情况下，实证研究并没有证实它们的存在，这表明模型中的动态存在错误，或者实证方法存在缺陷，或者两者兼而有之。断然否定自组织模式的论点是基于它们对打破对称性随机噪声的假设敏感性。然而，许多生成模式的合理机制对噪声具有鲁棒性，因此打破对称性不足以成为否定这些自组织模式的理由。
