Ray, and everyone,

ecosystems as they are observed in reality, not manipulated in reality,
exhibiting extreme behaviours, but real down to good earth habitats, soils,
and forest patches have properties. They may have the property of being
dynamic (this is where you discuss relay floristics, functional groups in
mature and old seral stage forests, etc.) and have identifiable structures,
compositions which makes their classification relatively easy. One easy way
to classify an ecosystem is to carry out a 'relevE' of the plants and
animals which live in an area. You first of all assess and describe the
dominant soils, the microclimate, the physiographic (orographic) and edaphic
(nutrient and water) relations there. Then when the releve is completed, you
carry out a few more and simply compare them. Where there is an absence or
significant presence of something in one, but in the others, you note it
down, you may even want to apply some special techniques like determining
the mean species significance, or presence class, and then come up with some
diagnostic group of species which are common to these sites. You might find
that Utah honeysuckle is present only in the Montane Spruce but is absent in
the Sub-boreal spruce zone.

Scale is very important in the discussion of ecology. Scale can be temporal
and spatial...and range from the biome to the very small ecosystem which
occurs inside the rainforest bromeliad, an epiphyte that grows only one tree
in a stream at the altitude of 3800 meters. What happens in the rain and
mist fed ecosystem of  the bromeliad is a microcosm of what happens in a
large ecosystem like the Amazon River Basin which is 7.5 million square
kilometers in area. They both possess 'homeostatic buffers' which are not
simply due to the individual ecological amplitudes of the species that
inhabit the ecosystem, but also their genetic quality which is intrinsic to
the whole genome of the Amazon Ecosystem, thus 'equilibria' or genetic
buffers which confer phenotypic adaptations and specializations in some
individual groups of interbreeding populations.

This is why I indicated that at the level of the biome, a signficant change
would be the origin and rise of a new phylum. There about 6 plant phyla, and
about 8 animal phyla. The chordates are one of the recent phylas, and
porifera are not so recent, I suspect....but the angiosperms, or flowering
plants which possess a gynecium and androcium are rather complex and
interesting....to say the least....

Skepticism is the rational process of free inquiry...it is not skepticism to
indicate a sincere doubt about some phenomenon, act or agent, but something
more like a process of inquiry that searches for the truth by deliberate
investigation into the evidence regarding it's existence and being. Where
there is a lack of evidence then skepticism is not actually occurring, there
is value, but it is a 'lack value' because inquiry is evidence based and
driven, and skepticism is a deliberate pursuit which cannot simply be doubt
(guessing veracity) nor denial (willing ignorance), before the evidence is
evaluated. It is a highly personal activity of investigation into a question
worth answering....I think...

thanks Ray

jf