ABSTRACT
The world is generally thought to be "deterministic". Stochasticity is taken as a given in most ecological framings of models, theories and experiments, and it has become a standard component of the ecologist's toolkit in the form of classical and modern statistical methodologies. Dealing with stochasticity in ecology is not without historical precedent. An early controversy in population dynamics was ultimately related to the question of stochasticity. The general distribution of population sizes is qualitatively altered by a simple addition of a stochastic force. A particularly instructive example of the intermingling of deterministic and stochastic forces is the behavior of a predator/prey system with simple density dependence on the prey population. A dedicated group of theoretical ecologists remain committed to understanding the interrelationship between chaos and stochasticity. The chapter emphasizes the effect of stochasticity as a force unto itself, not just the annoying variability that we seek to minimize in experiments, nor the basis of a statistical test.
