No need to take out a crystal ball from the closet or walk your finger along the veins of a leaf to predict the future of a forest. There is no point in planting a garden of several hectares in a laboratory to study the behavior of a fruit-eating pest and its predator. Knowledge bases recorded on a small scale allow in all cases to have access to the invisible. For example, the journey of a small animal in search of a place suitable for laying, between a tomato plant and a squash, where there is already a dangerous insect for crops. In a completely different way, scientists can also follow in an accelerated way the spread of trees under a Mediterranean sky. At the Faculty of Sciences of Valrose, the team of Patrick Coquillard, a researcher at the marine environment laboratory, simulates "heaps of phenomena" around the dynamics of populations in space and time. Invasive algae, bugs, wasps or Scots Pines, all transform one day or another into dots on a computer screen. The result: a graphic representation more or less elaborate but especially a valuable informational content.
The following: http://irh.unice.fr/spip.php?article547
Seen on: http://www.econologique.info/index.php/ ... bert-hooke
