In biological ecology, the concept of community has been defined in various ways, each definition offering particular advantages and creating its own set of problems. As the authors of one article in a 1987 British Ecological Society symposium on community ecology noted, "Community ecology may be unique amongst the branches of science in lacking a consensus definition of the entity with which it is principally concerned." Daniel Botkin provides a summary of the major alternatives: an ecological community is "either (1) a set of interacting populations of different species found in an area, meaning that the community is the living part of an ecosystem; or (2) all of the species found in a local area, whether or not they actually interact; or (3) all of the species of the same kind found in a local area, as in a 'plant community' or 'animal community'." Peter Taylor describes an ecological community...