Open-source brainstorming: Invasives, ecosystems, and systems theory

Nature Talk
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There are thoughts that keep me up at night, and I’m finally writing them down.

This thread is a space for open-source, collaborative brainstorming about invasive species, ecological resilience, and deeper system-level structures that might underlie both. My goal isn’t academic publication or personal credit, just the hope that someone else finds value in untangling the same knots.

This is an informal thread. Some of these ideas are half-formed, speculative, or weird. That’s the point. I’ll be sharing loosely structured notes, metaphors, etc., and I’m very open to others jumping in, redirecting, challenging, or adding their own questions.

My research background is mostly in field ecology in a freshwater estuarine setting. What I’m interested in now is less about specific organisms and more about what invasions reveal about system structure, vulnerability, and thresholds. Topics that may come up include:

Systems archetypes and modular, generalizable motifs.

Cross-disciplinary models.

Perception as an ecological force.

Invasive potential.

Open-source research and theory-building in a time where funding is being slashed indiscriminately and scientific research kneecapped.

Do intact ecosystems resist invasion, or do they just appear stable?

Can platforms like iNat help identify or predict invasion ability through patterns of absence, novelty, or ecological “voids”?

This probably won’t be updated daily, but I’ll return to it whenever the mental static flares back up. If this kind of thinking interests you, or you’ve seen similar threads, papers, or efforts elsewhere, I’d love to hear about it.

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Let’s explore the applicability of the invader archetype a bit: Typically, invasion implies intent to invade; a foreign conqueror, who’s taken steps to prepare, has a distinct motive, etc. Military conflict requires weapons, intent, resources, insane logistics, technology. The invader, the tip of the spear, is also self-serving and lacking in empathy.

I’m not sure this applies to invasive species, which are more or less transported to a foreign land without their knowledge/awareness. It’s much more “*poof. You’re here.”

Further back from the edge/tip of the spear, you have mere colonizers. Not on the edge, progressively insulated from edge conflict with increasing depth/distance. They arrive in waves.

I feel like the label “invasive” vs “lucky and subsequently prolific strangers” has led to disproportionate and incorrect focus on the “weapons” aspect; allelopathy, novel weapons theory, predator/prey dynamics, camouflage, etc.

And a research freebie I never got the chance to carry out:

Invasive phragmites grows taller, faster, than native phrag and most other wetland vegetation. This results in invasive phrag attracting both nesting marsh birds (red-winged blackbirds et al) as well as large flocks of migrating birds and European Starlings.

These species perceive invasive phrag to be better nesting/roosting/perching habitat. Implication?: Bird poop.

The use preferences of birds leads to invasive phrag getting access to higher nutrient levels, because it practically rains bird poop in those patches.

More growth → more birds → more droppings → more nutrients → more growth. Positive feedback loop supporting further invasion.

Could probably be documented by something as simple as laying out styrofoam plates as dropping collectors and measuring stem density and canopy cover.

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This is going to make for some interesting reading. The big words and concepts might hirt my brain though. My thoughts so far.

I get what you’re saying regarding the idea of invasion, but I think the term is still fitting. It’s not so much that they intend to invade, but the consequences are similar. Foreign species gain a foothold, displace the local population (who they compete with for resources), and spread. They’ll keep spreading until they hit a barrier of some sort, like a mountain or habitat change that they aren’t adapted to,such as going from a shady forest to open prarie.

The birds see a nesting area that meets their needs, but have no concept of whether the plant belongs there or not. They don’t understand that by choosing to nest there, they will be providing nutrients to the invasive plant, and encouraging its growth while making it harder for the native plant. While a positive for them, it might be a negative for something else, or even their offspring. As an example, I live in a small town, and work at the bodyshop next door. Nesting areas are sparse, so birds nest in any opening they can find or make in the building. They may have found a sheltered spot, but every year the offspring fall down inside the wall to meet a sad end. It serves their current need, but they don’t realise that it is actually a terrible spot for them.

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Just realized it’s probably a good idea to define some stuff, or at least link to sources who explain better than I can. It was kind of a pain to learn this stuff myself, because I could visualize the processes, etc., but I had no idea what they were called until years later.

Systems Archetypes

Motifs

Basically, you take a process and strip it down to a basic skeleton, and the result is a sort of constellation that can be found elsewhere and used as building blocks, or like puzzle pieces. But it’s about that process, not what’s specifically involved in the system itself.

Source-sink dynamics is a good example of this:

Coal (a carbon-rich material) was formed when dense vegetation in wetlands accumulated faster than it could decompose in oxygen-poor conditions. This forms peat, which, after accumulation, is buried under sediment and compacted under heat and pressure, eventually forming coal.

In ^this system, the wetland is a carbon sink. Carbon is what’s flowing through the system. The carbon source is the atmosphere, it moves through the wetland plants, and it’s eventually taken out of the larger system and stored away, in a “sink.”

Reduce that down to a skeleton, and change the currency to, say, red-winged blackbirds instead of carbon, and it still works.

RWBL nest in wetland vegetation. If they nest in wetlands adjacent to cornfields or suburbs, they get ravaged by raccoons, because raccoon populations are higher in those areas, due to food subsidization (crops, garbage, pet food, bird feeders, etc). More birds die in these wetlands than survive to adulthood. So, the RWBL source is protected natural wetlands, but ag/suburban wetlands are sinks, even though they may have the exact same vegetation.

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“The birds see a nesting area that meets their needs, but have no concept of whether the plant belongs there or not. They don’t understand that by choosing to nest there, they will be providing nutrients to the invasive plant, and encouraging its growth while making it harder for the native plant.”

This is exactly something I was working towards:

Ghosts, Strangers, and Doppelgangers.

My thoughts are: 1. All species have the potential to be invasive.

  1. Invasion success doesn’t have all that much to do with offensive/defensive traits or special advantages of those species. Invasion success is the result of perception failures of/within the native ecosystem. (Or, it’s a feature of all ecosystems. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.)

This leads us to Ghosts: Present, but “unseen” by the system. Passes through filters that work on other, pre-existing system components.

Strangers: “Visible” to the system, but a mystery. Unknown. Like a foreigner who speaks a different language and doesn’t understand yours. There’s a strong element of unpredictability here, and the system lacks protocols for interaction.

Doppelgangers: Visible to the system, but mimics something benign, intentionally or not, which confuses the system. A perfect example of this is Phragmites. The invasive, now apparently considered a subspecies, was originally described as an invasive phenotype. It resembles native phrag so closely that the native system treats it as such, to its own detriment.

Overall, invasives, in some form or fashion, don’t register. The system is “blind” to them in some way. The system is confused. And I do mean the system vs individual species within the system, but I’m probably not going to be able to get to that tonight. The superquick summary version of that is, though: Species are subject to perception errors, including a Dunning-Kruger equivalent. They can treat an invasive like it belongs or not, but when they do so, from their perspective, they “know” their choice is the “correct” one, even if they’re wrong.

Systemic confusion occurs, in part, because different species/components of the system treat the invasive differently, producing conflicting signals.

(I’d like to come up with a more visually obvious dividing line than that… Maybe this:)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (woo)

There’s this thing invasive species tend to do at the population level: They arrive, they hang around and fester for a bit, and then boom, they multiply. And there’s not always a defined cue or causal link for that boom that’s readily observed.

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Can’t sleep.

This:

Systemic confusion occurs, in part, because different species/components of the system treat the invasive differently, producing conflicting signals.

This is the double slit experiment.

In the double slit experiment, a photon behaves differently depending on whether it’s observed: wave vs particle.

Transferring this to an ecosystem, the “photon” is the non-native species, and each species or subsystem acts like an observer, interpreting its presence based on its own local frame.

Part of the system sees a “particle,” part sees a “wave.” The system can’t “decide” what the invasive is.

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, except when it’s not a duck. But non-ducks can generate duck-like effects.

My attempt to explain that gobbledygook: If your experience with puddles is that if you step in one, it’s so deep that you fall in up to your nose, you avoid all puddles. A 2" deep puddle therefore has the same effect in that context as a 6’ deep puddle.

Scarecrows are mistaken for people; Crows stay away. During that time, said crows are doing things elsewhere, in other parts of the system. Foraging, pooping, calling, etc.

Airplane shadows are mistaken for those of raptors; Prairie dogs hide in their burrows. During that time, said prairie dogs are in a location where they wouldn’t normally be, in a world without planes, which might slightly reduce pressure on the plants they’d forage, or make it slightly more difficult for their actual predators to hunt them.

The point is that it’s not just the invasive species that’s different, but that the reactions/actions/behaviors of other system components, as a result of perceiving/interacting with the non-native, reverberate throughout the system, stimulating reactions across all of their successive interactions.

This creates feedback instability or cognitive noise/static at the network level. Which may allow non-natives to persist, or give them some advantage merely by virtue of being non-native.

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Yes, cute endangered animals get more public attention, which leads to more awareness. Everyone knows about Pandas, or Polar bears but noone cares about the purple pig nose frog.

So there are two points I see here.
The first is “resist invasion”. It is nearly impossible, if not completely impossible, to remain completely objective in the assessment of a complex system. Think anthropamophizing but to an exponential degree. Even if you believe that there are intents beyond the basic biologic drives. (Different conversation).

The second is “Appear Stable”.
Ecosystems are dynamic implying they change. Stable implies no change. While I certainly grasp what you are saying, and have oft said similar things. I think it is worth pointing out that stable is dependent on the point of view. I think that all ecosystems are on the brink of being erratically unstable as well as being predictably unstable.
Its like statistics and probability but applied to biology.

If I may continue with my two cents.
Do you think that if instead of looking at things from an “invasive potential” we looked at them from a “external resource requirements and tolerations” it would be a more apt description? Albeit more wordy.
I personally approach my conservation ethos from a “This is a complex system with interactions I am yet to understand therefore I should study it”. I believe that whether or not I like the idea change is inevitable and the best I can do is learn from things that have gone through a longer process of some kind of trial and error than I will ever be able to myself.
Thanks for reading. I’ll stop now. I could talk for way too long.

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In what way is the invasive Phragmites detrimental? One could argue that the unique genetics of the native form is lost, resulting in a net loss of genetic diversity for the species as a whole; but on the other hand, if the invasive form has the same ecological role, connections, and interactions, wouldn’t its “detrimental” nature at the ecosystem level necessarily be a human value judgment?

When I was in grad school, I remember grad students and faculty having discussion groups about published papers. At one point, there were differences of opinion as to whether an ecosystem cares how biodiverse it is.

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That’s the charismatic species effect. What I initially meant was how different species or parts of the system perceive each other, but that actually ties into something else I was working on:

Humans are hardwired to have a thing for critters we deem cute; young, enlarged puppy dog eyes, fluffy, things that resemble human infants. (Likely played a role in domestication as well) There’s also a larger cultural embodiment of this centered around enigmatic species; elephants, pandas, etc. And like you said, it causes us to give disproportionate attention to those species. Or, disproportionate inattention to everything else.

But as a motif, this isn’t unique to humans, and may even apply to all species, or at least a wide range of them. Enter the KiWa.

The kirtland’s warbler is a specialist that requires a narrow range of habitat for nesting. It nests only in stands of jack pine that are 5-~20 years old. Some sources say 5-15, some 5-22. But, that’s it. This species would rather die out than simply nest elsewhere, despite being fully capable of nesting elsewhere. It’s practically begging to become extinct, because it’s obsessed with that particular habitat for nesting. Evolution has caused or allowed the development of… fixations, which might be something that allows invasives to be ignored or effectively remain invisible to the larger system. If it’s not the fixation, it gets ignored.

This kinda leads to a hypothesis:

The previously discussed conflicting signals at the systemic level may be the result of the different perceptions of specialist species vs generalists. Though, it’s a bit more fine grained than that. Back to RWBL: They’re specialists in the sense that they nest specifically in wetlands, but in terms of nesting habitat, they’re generalists. They’ll nest in willows, phrag, typha, whatever’s available. They only apparently have a preference hierarchy based on vegetation height.

What I’ve been leaning towards is the idea that specialists become more prevalent in a system the longer that system remains isolated, that there’s an ideal gradient-based correlation between biodiversity and energy (or perhaps one of Howard Odum’s measures; emergy, exergy), and that outliers along that gradient, i.e. systems rich in specialists due to extended periods of isolation vs their intrinsic energetic properties, are intrinsically weak systems ripe for invasion/collapse/extinction events.

I doubt this is a unique thought, but it’s my placeholder atm. What this perspective combats, though, is the idea that diversity = resilience/strength, which I don’t believe is true.

I like your thoughts on resource needs and tolerances because it emphasizes functional traits, niche compatibility, and ecological fit. It focuses on how a species interfaces with system resources, not its label or origin. I think perception and signal interference mediate or accelerate swaps in fit. They’re not the only forces, but they act as facilitators or triggers for reconfiguration at the system level.

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The assumption is that invasives are detrimental because they make interactions with and within the system less predictable and reliable. Usually, this manifests as “economic harm” and extinction prevention. Both human value judgments.

I don’t actually agree with that (thought I was raised by academic advisors who did), but yeah, the system doesn’t care. The system may actually prefer to be invaded.

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Back to this:

This is the double slit experiment.
… … …
This creates feedback instability or cognitive noise/static at the network level. Which may allow non-natives to persist, or give them some advantage merely by virtue of being non-native.

Any math nerds in the house? How could ^this be described?

Fuzzy logic? Bayes? Agent-based models? Quantum superposition, or other quantum-inspired models? Game theory? Information theory?

Some kind of soup, where each one is used to describe a specific level of organization or motif/archetype? (<-My personal favorite)

And back to this:

Specialization appears to be the systems equivalent of inbreeding, analogous to low mutation rates in closed populations. So, one would expect certain mass extinction events to share the same systems archetype or motif as inbreeding depression, or an extinction vortex.

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What is this about ? I’m trained in electronics many years ago. The system theory that first came to my mind is the Feedback loop control system.
In my very occasional chatting with the physics inclined people online, the idea seems like physics theories govern the universe. Some physicists like to talk about nuclear stuff and the maths involved is kind of complicated.
The natural world could be simplified into systems, but I think in reality the living world may be fairly complex. There could be maths involve. There needs to be an objective for what you are going to research for.
Very few biological systems on earth today is untouched by human beings. The world is interconnected. Perhaps there could be uninhabited islands in the middle of the ocean. The deepest part of of oceans or lakes. Antarctica, Arctic or some desert oasis. Think of the rabbits in Australia. and start drawing some boxes for the system. Lots of maths I suppose. The control system will need an objective. or like in my Primary school science class, we draw the who eats who food web. This will be a simplification of system and it can be scaled up to look more formidable.
To add, some questions on the natural world is explained by Charles Darwin’s Evolution theories. I always consider some points in the Evolution theories for thinking about some stuff.

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I looked at the references.

Someone decided to overload the “archetype” term for a fad management theory and call it Systems theory. The predictive powers of that theory and its applicability to ecosystems are questionable.
Game theory already explored those scenarios with quantifiable results.

The definition of Motifs as a set of sub-graphs is quite robust and term has only been used in Humanities (arts). It is seems useful in solving optimisation problems.

Systems in general and ecosystems in particular cannot be represented as graphs. As the number subsystems and components is variable for the later, lattice and lattice transformation would be a more appropriate mathematical tool.

BTW the carbon cycle is about limestone. Coal is a side note.

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I wonder if there is an aspect of humidity to the ovulation cycle in these birds. I know the birds I worked with in AZ. (Masked Bobwhite Quail) had their “breeding season” dependent on the humidity. Although it makes more sense for a bird in the desert to have that. Perhaps it has to do with humidity and its proabability of having more food (insects) etc.

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In my humble opinion, platforms like iNat can be extremely helpful in solving complex problems in the field of geobotany, interrelationships between plants and their geographical environment, problems of floristics, plant geography, plant ecology and phytosociology…

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Only the third time humans reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and they found a plastic bag!

@retromud are you familiar with Ecology, the Ascendent Perspective by Robert Ulanowicz? It seems to be in line with your interests.

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I’m not ignoring replies, I promise. I got preoccupied with:

How and in what ways might an ecosystem can “see”, store, and access memory? Like the “fixations” I mentioned earlier, but cumulative. Morphic resonance used to be my placeholder, but it’s too much of a crackpot idea. So… In the meantime, I’m borrowing from the idea of distributed cognition.

The interactions within an ecosystem themselves are memory. Systems remember by preserving patterns of relations/interactions. Network topology is the substrate of ecological memory.

Who interacts with whom, in what direction, with what frequency, and with what redundancy. Who eats whom, who pollinates what, what shelters or nests in what, etc. These are things that change slowly unless disturbed.

This could be analyzed using network motifs, feedback depth, and the amount of redundancy in the system.

Functional definitions:

Motifs: Repeating substructures that encode past functionality.

Redundancy: Alternative paths that preserve system function if disrupted.

Feedback loops: Self-reinforcing circuits that stabilize identity.

Modularity: Semi-independent clusters of interaction that buffer disturbances.

Keystone bridges: Nodes linking otherwise disconnected modules.

Connectivity distribution: Degree of centralization vs decentralization.

Allegories (woo):

Persistence of interaction motifs = memory.

Disruption of topological continuity = collapse.

Redundancy or regeneration ability of relationships/interactions = resilience.

Invasion is effectively a disruption or reconfiguration of existing patterns.

Component ideas:

Perception mediates access to memory, and probably also memory formation.

Signal interference mediates interpretation. Signal interference could scramble network coordination, eroding or distorting memory and/or recall.

Topology stores memory through persistent relational patterns.

If the interpretation of those patterns becomes disrupted, feedback loops can misfire, motifs can decay, and resilience erodes. Misinformation would likely be applicable as well.

Invasion challenges memory by introducing signal ambiguity; double slit.

Ecosystem resilience depends on the clarity of networked perception; triangulation, echolocation, signal reverberation.

Ties into:

Keystone structures
Emergy/Exergy
Rhetorical techniques, logical fallacies, cognitive biases
Disinformation, misinformation, gaslighting, hallucinations, dreams
Critical thresholds and phase shifts

Also, if the system’s memory structure and energy flow define what’s possible, then, if invasions can be predicted, so can evolution/speciation. The water takes the shape of the cup. I do wonder what ancient ecosystems looked like. Some motifs/archetypes have been around for billions of years, and even after horrifying mass extinction events (think end-Permian mass extinction), they reappear.