Analysis of equilibrium communities: an account of a yearlong exploration and meditation on floral diagrams

Abstract

This thesis introduces “floral diagrams” as a novel conceptual framework to investigate equilibrium communities within an evolutionary ecology context. Inspired by nature’s continuous and stochastic processes, floral diagrams are graphical models governed by formal rules of intersection and endurance, representing the interplay of events, patterns, and randomness in ecological systems. In this framework, nodes symbolize environmental types, with leaves illustrating spaces of inter-trophic species coexistence, providing a lens to explore community resilience and balance across temporal, spatial, and phylogenetic scales. Concepts such as the “mirroring effect” and “reflective time” propose internal relatedness and global evolutionary dynamics among community members. Through a yearlong exploration, this work underscores the potential of floral diagrams to address scale-dependent patterns and unify ecological perspectives. Though theoretical, the framework establishes a foundation for future empirical research, offering innovative insights into the stability and evolvability of complex ecological systems. Keywords: floral diagrams, equilibrium communities, evolutionary ecology, community resilience, scale-dependent patterns, mirroring effect, reflective time, stochastic process