ABSTRACT
The most fundamental aspects of ecology are conceptualized in a very low dimensional space, even though it is understood that ecology in the real world involves many actors, which is to say, it is multidimensional. There is something very special about continuous two-dimensional systems. Restricting a system to two dimensions dramatically limits the potential behaviors it can represent. There is much interest in representing food webs as networks, with the nodes being species and the edges representing energy flow. The use of directed graphs is an important step toward the accurate representation of a food web. An intransitive loop is most easily seen in the process of interspecific competition, although the phenomenon is seen in all sorts of multidimensional applications. This chapter provides some insights as to the underlying significance of multidimensionality in ecological systems, and some potential tools for contextualizing multidimensionality in the context of ecological complexity.
