Ecosystems as Polyphonic Readiness Fields: 6 Ecosystem Evolution: The Expansion of Ecological Possibility

Ecosystems do not evolve as single organisms do.

There is no genome, no blueprint, no guiding intelligence.

Yet ecosystems change over time, sometimes dramatically, expanding the range of ecological possibility.

From a relational perspective, ecosystem evolution is the migration and elaboration of readiness fields across species, space, and time. It is not a story of “improvement” or “degradation,” but of complexification and re-partitioning of relational potential.

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1. Colonisation and Early Successional Stages

Ecosystems begin as fields of constrained potential:

• Newly exposed or disturbed environments are sparsely occupied.

• Few species exist, each enacting large, overlapping readiness cuts.

• Initial interactions (predation, facilitation, competition) create emergent micro-gradients of field coherence.

Early successional species are generalists: their perspectival construals are broad, stabilising minimal coherence, establishing the first gradients of potential.

Colonisation thus expands ecosystem potential by introducing new orientations in space, time, and resource use.

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2. Intermediate and Late Succession: Expanding Relational Complexity

As ecosystems mature:

• Species diversity increases, not by chance, but as a consequence of gradually differentiated readiness fields.

• Niche construction, mutualisms, and predation networks create nested gradients that allow multiple perspectival loci to coexist.

• Herbivores, pollinators, decomposers, and microbial consortia redistribute constraints, producing multi-layered temporal and spatial coherence.

Climax ecosystems represent highly structured readiness fields, where multiple species’ cuts are optimally interleaved:

• Energy flow, nutrient cycling, and temporal rhythms become highly interdependent.

• No single species dictates the system; the field emerges from co-individuation across all active perspectives.

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3. Migration of Constraints Over Evolutionary Time

Ecosystem evolution is not just species turnover:

• Pollination networks expand as plants and pollinators co-enact readiness alignments.

• Herbivory reorganises plant spatial and temporal gradients.

• Decomposers recycle materials, creating latent potential for new cuts to emerge.

Constraints migrate:

• A constraint originally enacted by one species may be taken up by another (e.g., seed dispersers replacing extinct mutualists).

• Functions are redistributed across new perspectival loci, altering the ecosystem’s shape without invoking design or teleology.

In this sense, evolution is a dynamic re-partitioning of ecological potential, not just survival of the fittest.

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4. Novel Ecosystems and Post-Human Assemblages

Modern ecosystems often defy historical reference:

• Introduced species, climate change, urbanisation, and habitat modification produce entirely new relational configurations.

• From the relational lens, these are not degraded remnants, but legitimate new articulations of readiness fields.

• Novel ecosystems illustrate the flexibility of multi-perspectival alignment: constraints are rearranged, new coherence patterns emerge, and new potentialities are actualised.

We can describe these systems without invoking loss or dysfunction, simply as alternative expressions of ecological potential.

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5. Expanding the Field of Possibility

Ecosystem evolution is ultimately about expansion of ecological possibility:

• Colonisation introduces basic potentials.

• Succession elaborates nested gradients of coherence.

• Constraint migration allows long-term realignment of relational fields.

• Novel configurations demonstrate the generative capacity of ecosystems to restructure readiness fields.

Evolution is thus not improvement; it is the proliferation of ways in which multi-species perspectives can be aligned, constrained, and actualised.