  We demonstrate the presence of chaos in stochastic simulations that are
widely used to study biodiversity in nature. The investigation deals with a set
of three distinct species that evolve according to the standard rules of
mobility, reproduction and predation, with predation following the cyclic rules
of the popular rock, paper and scissors game. The study uncovers the
possibility to distinguish between time evolutions that start from slightly
different initial states, guided by the Hamming distance which heuristically
unveils the chaotic behavior. The finding opens up a quantitative approach that
relates the correlation length to the average density of maxima of a typical
species, and an ensemble of stochastic simulations is implemented to support
the procedure. The main result of the work shows how a single and simple
experimental realization that counts the density of maxima associated with the
chaotic evolution of the species serves to infer its correlation length. We use
the result to investigate others distinct complex systems, one dealing with a
set of differential equations that can be used to model a diversity of natural
and artificial chaotic systems, and another one, focusing on the ocean water
level.
