ABSTRACT
Ecologists have generally viewed and defined the world based on light. This approach is valid in that plant distribution is related to light intensity, and herbivore distribution is related to plant distribution. Yet, not everything is related to light and vision. Olfactory predators and their prey live in a parallel world of olfaction where everything is related to airflow and turbulence. In this chapter, I redefine common ecological terms utilizing this alternate view of the world. In doing so, my goal is not to convince ecologists to redefine their terms but rather to promote the reality that human reliance on vision influences our perception of the world, our definitions of the natural world, and how we classify objects. If olfaction were the dominant sense of humans, our perceptions, definitions, and classification schemes would be different.
