Permaculture Information Web

[Heide Hermary <heide.hermary AT gaiacollege.ca>]

We could have

Relationships
    Object related to
    Type of relationship: food plant for, etc.
    Properties of relationship: might want to add additional info
        here

And build a list of the types of posible relationships.

Here are some of the types of relationships I think you are referring to:

• Mutualism: Food / Food  - Food / Propagation - Food / Defense
  
• Competition
• Parasitism
• Predation
  

These, however, are just between two organisms.  When you talk about "guilds" we need to refer back to my previous example about the relationship between the plant that feeds byt butterfly larvae, and the plants that feed the butterfly adult. The plants themselves have no relationship to each other, but certainly are required for the functioning of the "guild" or ecosystem. Similarly complex relationships exist between thousands of organisms within the soil environment and within various sizes of ecosystems.

I've thought about this a lot and finally decided not to worry about categories, but to describe the relationships.  Too much is lost by trying to fit organisms and dynamic relationships into tight little boxes.  That's not how life works.  And that's why we don't have much easily accessible information on exactly these things.  Which is the reason for developing this database in the first place.  So let's not condemn it to superficiality right from the start.

Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea what the techies are talking about. PLEASE allow for plain text entry into these fields!!  Our database is based on Wiki technology and actually works very well.  I am sure this can be integrated with other stuff.  We'd be happy to share it with you to stimulate the though process if that would be helpful.  It's definitely far from perfect, but also definitely on the right track.

Cheers, Heide