ABSTRACT
There has been prodigious press surrounding the idea of chaos. Chaos is well-known in theory. It is also very well-known in a variety of practical applications, such as the pumping action of the heart and weather prediction. Ecological systems are almost certainly examples of chaotic systems, at least some of them, sometimes. A chaotic attractor is, as might be guessed, an object that is eventually approached, and trajectories that are not on the chaotic attractor are transients to it. The idea of an "attractor" that is "chaotic" may seem strange when first encountered. The spatial dynamics of ecological systems has produced certain chaotic patterns that not only reflect complex trajectories in time, but also seemingly random spatial patterns. The very idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions is crucial to the idea of chaos, but not really the central message.
