“Opportunists are the weeds in a farmer’s newly turned field, the bacteria in a Tupperware of leftovers, or the mice in a catless barn. These communities, called Type I systems, spring up to take advantage of abundant resources. They typically use resources as quickly as they can, turning them into adult bodies and then into numerous, small offspring – thousands of insect eggs, for instance. The idea behind this rapid growth strategy is to grow your population, maximize throughput of materials, and then head for the next horn of plenty, with no time for recycling or efficiency.” (BENYUS, p. 249)
A healthy ecosystem is decentralized (although not maximally decentralized) and, as such, needs synergy between its parts such as to achieve metabolic efficiency.
In this sense, opportunists can often act as the “janitors” of an ecosystem: think of decomposer species (bacteria, fungi). They can have a role in an ecosystem, despite their inherent low-level of inherent “complexity” (such as usually being -selectors1).
References
- BENYUS, Janine. Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature. 1997.
Footnotes
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Related to the logistic equation . -selectors (e.g. bacteria) are species which maximize offspring, but at the cost of lower life expectancy (i.e. carrying capacity ). ↩