Permaculture and information
webs of interactions
Back in the day a friend told me to hang bags of hair from my newly planted fruit trees. The idea being that the smell of humans would discourage deer from nibbling at the trees. A while later we put outward facing long stakes encircled with wire. The hair hadn’t worked, the physical barrier did.
The idea behind the hair was to insert information into a food web, here be humans and they are already known to be dangerous. Unfortunately the hair wasn’t sending enough information into the food web and it was ignored. Had I slept next to a tree then that would inserted much more information, my smell, my movements etc into the web. That would have kept the deer away but it would only have protected the trees near to me.
Slugs are another example. We can set beer traps which give out information to slugs, and not just slugs, that there is a food source nearby. They go to the beer and leave the seedlings alone. Hervé Covés, an agronomist and permaculture designer, designs in areas that contain lots of things liked by slugs. The animals are attracted to them and away from the crop-row seedlings.
Ecologists talk about food webs and predator-prey interactions. They create pictures of these, showing the trophic levels of a food web. Something lacking from these models is the flow of information through the ecosystems.
Information is also circulating through me. My body will produce some ghrelin and this stimulates my appetite. I interpret the information as ‘I am hungry’. I eat and eventually my body will produce glucagon-like peptide-1 and I will interpret this as information, ‘I’ve had enough, thanks’. Information is flowing into and through my body all the time, it can cause changes in my behaviour and my routines. Changes to my behaviour can have knock on effects and change that of people around me.
We can overlay an information web onto the world around us and this can help us understand it better. For example, we release a lot of molecules into the environment. These can have impacts on our health and that of other animals, they can also change behaviour. People are prescribed clobazam to treat sleep-disorders, this molecule gets into water bodies and is taken up by aquatic animals. Researchers in Sweden have found that when young salmon pick up this molecule, they change their behaviour. It actually increases their success at surmounting hurdles such as dams and their overall migratory success. This could be seen as a good thing but there are always unforeseen consequences, we don’t, as yet, know what these may be for the salmon.
We can project that the clobazam affected salmon have a higher reproductive success and eventually the whole population depends on the presence of this molecule. We clean up the water and this sends a shock through the salmon population which has integrated the molecule into it’s reproductive success. In a straightforward food web analysis, salmon predators are also affected by the pharmaceutical. Top level salmon predators such as bear and some birds will bio-accumulate clobazam, the molecule is anxiolytic, it reduces anxiety. It’s accumulation in top-predators could make them less wary and more inclined to take risks. Clobazam is classed as a benzodiazepine medication, these have been associated with increased reward-seeking behaviours.
Adding the information webs to the food webs
Environmental information
Light, noise, vibration and more, disturb the world and it’s inhabitants. This type of environmental information causes changes in animal behaviour. It pushes some away and changes the behaviour of other, a light source attracts insects and they attract spiders.
When a cabbage plant is attacked by a cabbage white caterpillar, it identifies the specific species by detecting the saliva of the caterpillar. In response, the plant emits information by means of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) these attract parasitoid wasps, natural predators of the caterpillar. These wasps deposit their eggs on the caterpillar, which later hatch and ultimately kill the host.
Trophic information
A lot of us have seen the film about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone park. The wolves leave traces of information, smell from faeces, urine and themselves. They also spread the word about their presence by howling. This information is picked up by the local herbivores who react by changing their behaviour. They move away from areas where they are easily hunted and move to ones offering more places to hide.
Deer behavior changes significantly during hunting seasons. During bow season, deer tend to follow more natural movement patterns, such as traveling between feeding and bedding areas. However, once gun season begins, the increased number of hunters and the louder sounds of firearms create more pressure on deer. This often leads them to seek out thicker cover and less accessible areas to avoid human activity. The word has spread and the deer have adapted their behaviour.
Pure information
This is about information that doesn’t directly involve feeding. Crows and Ravens often watch other animals, like wolves or humans, to locate food sources. They may follow predators to scavenge leftovers from their kills. Dolphins often watch seabirds diving into the water to locate schools of fish. This helps them find food more efficiently. Meerkats have designated sentinels that watch for predators while others forage. The sentinels observe the environment and alert the group to danger.
These are just three examples of animals picking up pure information from the environment and adjusting their behaviour appropriately.
Permaculture
Bill Mollison came up with the Permaculture principle ‘everything gardens’. What he meant was that everything is always impacting everything else. Information is continually flowing through ecosystems and changing the behaviour of the organisms that are in it.
In some areas of the world abandoned land will eventually become forest. When we take the land to turn it into a vegetable garden we are interrupting both the food web dynamics and the information flows. We are trying to send the message to the land that ‘you are no longer becoming a forest, you are going to be a vegetable garden.’ One of the things that will be directly affected is the mycorrhizal network, we’ve known for a while the importance of this network in nutrient flows, 70 percent of land plant species have a partner fungus in their roots. Information passes between the fungi, plants and trees, this stimulates symbiotic nutrient flows. Damaging or destroying this network shuts down the flows of both information and nutrients.
Mollison also came up with the principle ‘only harvest water and sunlight.’ By this he meant that everything else has to be returned to the soil. Degradation of the soil sends messages to the plants and soil fauna and they can leave causing a trophic cascade, and things get worse. This is a form of nutrient extraction, we do it everywhere, researchers at Utah State University and the Sea Around Us at the University of British Columbia estimate that industrial fisheries have removed over 430 million tons of carbon, 110 million tons of nitrogen, and 23 million tons of phosphorus from countries' Exclusive Economic Zones and 18 high seas regions since 1960. This causes massive changes both to the food web and to the information flows. Some animals adapt, others die off, others move away.
You can read some fascinating new ideas about the information web in this research. Embedding information flows within ecological networks
Social information flows.
These have been studied more than the the ones above and we tend to refer to the current phase of human civilisation as the ‘information age’. As Permaculture is based on Ecology it can be insightful to analyse things from an ecological perspective.
Trophic information
A local Mayor wants to introduce surveillance cameras into the centre of a nearby town. The idea being that it will become harder for ‘criminals’ to find their prey. Information about the change will spread through the ‘criminal community’ and they will stay away. What usually happens is that the ‘criminals’, in a similar way to the Yellowstone deer/wolves, will move to areas that have no cameras. In our hamlet we have neither cameras nor streetlights so I expect the ‘criminals’ will soon catch on!
Pure information.
Planting trees, strategically, has been shown to reduce ‘criminal’ activity in urban areas. Local people tend to spend more time outside in their ‘prettier’ environment. They act like the meercat sentinels, they notice suspicious behaviour and react appropriately.
One of the reasons that we have more wildfires is because there are fewer people out in the countryside working it. The shepherds, goat-herders and other people involved in rural activities noticed the beginnings of a fire and would go and extinguish it.
Environmental information.
We try and forecast what the weather is going to do and if it’s the moment or not to start seeding or planting. We seek to work out if the warm weather is going to go cold again, so seeding could be too early. Or, in other climates, is the rainy season starting?
A world of lies
Does lying and cheating exist in the natural world? Well, myco-heterotrophic plants hack into the mycorrhizal network and take from the fungi without giving back. All monotropes (Monotropoideae) are examples of this. Perhaps parasitism can be considered cheating?
Chimps have been observed misleading others to hide food sources or gain access to mates. Death’s-Head Hawkmoths mimic the scent of bees to infiltrate hives and steal honey without being attacked. These are both examples of animals giving out false information. The objective being to present the world other than it is. The bees think that their world is OK despite it being predated upon by a moth, they think that the moth is a bee.
A lie is a deliberate falsehood, it's when someone knowingly presents untrue information as if it were true, often to deceive others. Lying can occur through words, actions, or even omission of relevant facts. The intent to mislead is what differentiates a lie from a simple mistake or misunderstanding. There are many examples from the natural world of animals deliberately misleading others. For example: Killdeer birds feign injury, such as pretending to have a broken wing, to lure predators away from their nests. Lyrebirds can imitate sounds like chainsaws or other bird calls to confuse predators or attract mates. Bolus spiders mimic the pheromones of female moths to lure male moths into their webs.
These are examples of animals misleading others but within ecosystems that aren’t based on misconceptions. We humans have gone the other way and we have created our own ecosystems in which lies, half-truths and deliberate misleading are fundamental. From advertising, through to lobby ‘wargames’, we try and get by in a human world where information is mainly misinformation. This means that the information that people need is like an inverted iceberg, the submerged real data is drowned under a mass of lies. People, increasingly, don’t believe what they read and hear. 60% globally say news organizations regularly report false stories, 48% across 27 countries have been fooled by fake news, believing a false story was real until later finding out it was fabricated.
I wrote about lying in this article and what it does to our amygdalas here:
The question for Permaculture designers is how do we design systems to make them evidence based and ones in which deliberate misleading is out? We have to design in such a way that the ecosystem changes. Permaculture is based on 3 ethics, care for people, care for the Earth and equity. Caring for people means not misleading them, equity means being fair and honest. Designing these principles in such a way that they are hard-wired into a project means we are designing correctly.
I have found that when people understand better how the scientific method works they become less sceptical of scientific research. They ask me what I look out for when reading research papers?
Who did the research?
What do they say in the ‘declaration of vested interests’?
Who sponsored it?
What was their methodology?
In the shorter term we can use inoculation theory with the people we are working with. Basically it’s ‘pre-bunking’ and I discussed it in this article:
The last great philosopher, Terry Pratchett, wrote that ‘a lie can go around the world before the truth has got it’s boots on’. If the lie bumps into people already inoculated it just bounces off.
One of the reasons I write these articles is to try and get some good data out there. I spend a lot of time verifying the research and data on which they are based. My only vested interest is trying to sort out this mess we’ve made for ourselves. The best approach I have found is Permaculture design.
I’ve got some ghrelin telling me I’m hungry and some pure information that everyone is going to the market. Environmental information is telling me that there are more and more tourists at the market at the moment. Trophic information tells me that most locals will have been and gone from the market very early. Pure information tells me that it’s going to be difficult to find a table on the bar terrace.
I’m going to go anyway.
Back in another day in France, permaculture designer Andy Darlington got visitors to paint human urine on the trunks of fruit trees to deter bark nibbling goats. Probably worked better than the hair. Also, a very good task to give to someone who was a bit up themselves..