ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION AND 1 F-NOISE

Among ecologists, there has been a growing recognition of the importan ce of long-term correlations in environmental time series, The family of 1/f-noises-fluctuations defined in terms of the different timescale s present - is a useful approach to this problem, White noise and the random walk, the two currently favoured descriptions of environmental fluctuations, lie at extreme ends of this family of processes, Recent analyses of data, results of models, and examination of basic 1/f-nois e properties, suggest that pink 1/f-noise, which lies midway between w hite noise and the random walk, might be the best null model of enviro nmental variation, If true, this would have important consequences for the interpretation of ecological time series and for ecological and e volutionary modelling.