Ode to the Niche     (An Ecologist's Nightmare)

With hypervolumetric grin,
I grow more Hutchinsonian
Despite intense investigation
Of axial proliferation.

Each bird I see expands in place
To seventeen-dimension space;
And should it light on forest floor,
Then axes sprout a dozen more!

Euclid would approve with glee
How territoriality
Of bunting perched upon a stone
Is asymptote to hypercone!

And should competing species brawl
A tesseract defines the sprawl.
Yet meaning loses in the end;
We've lost the zero origin!
 

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Notes:  I wrote this during my PhD dissertation, which was a monstrous, multivariate analysis of ecological data on bird ecology.  "Hutchinson" of course fathered/mothered the concept of the n-dimensional niche, which is but a simple use of n-axis Euclidean geometry.  What might a non-Euclidean representation of an organisms' role in its ecosystem look like, one that would account for its ever-changing ecological roles within ever-changing environments?
- bgm

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