Experimental Studies of Extinction Dynamics

Belovsky, Gary E.; Mellison, Chad; Larson, Chad A.; Zandt, Peter A. Van

doi:10.1126/science.286.5442.1175

Cited by 97 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In addition, evidence from islands supports it (13). Yet, a recent investigation suggests that the literature needs substantial revision to achieve a reliable estimate of how long such extinctions take (14). It concludes that such extinctions may take much less time than we once thought.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Loss of speciation rate will impoverish future diversity

Rosenzweig

2001

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

140

119

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Human activities have greatly reduced the amount of the earth's area available to wild species. As the area they have left declines, so will their rates of speciation. This loss of speciation will occur for two reasons: species with larger geographical ranges speciate faster; and loss of area drives up extinction rates, thus reducing the number of species available for speciation. Theory predicts steady states in species diversity, and fossils suggest that these have typified life for most of the past 500 million years. Modern and fossil evidence indicates that, at the scale of the whole earth and its major biogeographical provinces, those steady states respond linearly, or nearly so, to available area. Hence, a loss of x% of area will produce a loss of about x% of species. Local samples of habitats merely echo the diversity available in the whole province of which they are a part. So, conservation tactics that rely on remnant patches to preserve diversity cannot succeed for long. Instead, diversity will decay to a depauperate steady state in two phases. The first will involve deterministic extinctions, reflecting the loss of all areas in which a species can ordinarily sustain its demographics. The second will be stochastic, reflecting accidents brought on by global warming, new diseases, and commingling the species of the separate bio-provinces. A new kind of conservation effort, reconciliation ecology, can avoid this decay. Reconciliation ecology discovers how to modify and diversify anthropogenic habitats so that they harbor a wide variety of species. It develops management techniques that allow humans to share their geographical range with wild species.

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mentioning

confidence: 92%

Loss of speciation rate will impoverish future diversity

Rosenzweig

2001

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

140

119

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“…On the other hand, toxicity, habitat degradation or food rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org J. R. Soc. Interface 14: 20160845 depletion may lead to a decrease in the intrinsic growth rate of a population favouring the chances of stochastic extinction [43][44][45]. We mimic all these effects by gradually changing growth rate r 0 (¼[0.01, 3]), while setting the overall harvesting rate F to zero (figure 1a).…”

Section: Simulated Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated nonlinearity as an indicator of shifts in the dynamics of populations under stress

Dakos

Glaser

Hsieh

et al. 2017

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Populations occasionally experience abrupt changes, such as local extinctions, strong declines in abundance or transitions from stable dynamics to strongly irregular fluctuations. Although most of these changes have important ecological and at times economic implications, they remain notoriously difficult to detect in advance. Here, we study changes in the stability of populations under stress across a variety of transitions. Using a Ricker-type model, we simulate shifts from stable point equilibrium dynamics to cyclic and irregular boom-bust oscillations as well as abrupt shifts between alternative attractors. Our aim is to infer the loss of population stability before such shifts based on changes in nonlinearity of population dynamics. We measure nonlinearity by comparing forecast performance between linear and nonlinear models fitted on reconstructed attractors directly from observed time series. We compare nonlinearity to other suggested leading indicators of instability (variance and autocorrelation). We find that nonlinearity and variance increase in a similar way prior to the shifts. By contrast, autocorrelation is strongly affected by oscillations. Finally, we test these theoretical patterns in datasets of fisheries populations. Our results suggest that elevated nonlinearity could be used as an additional indicator to infer changes in the dynamics of populations under stress.

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“…Small populations are more likely to go extinct because of demographic stochasticity (Lande et al 2003). (Burkey 1997;Belovsky et al 1999) 2. The magnitude of population density fluctuations resulting from demographic stochasticity should scale inversely with the square root of population numbers (May 1973).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of extinction in experimental populations

Griffen¹,

Drake

2008

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Summary 1.Population extinction is a fundamental ecological process. Recent experimental work has begun to test the large body of theory that predicts how demographic, genetic and environmental factors influence extinction risk. We review empirical studies of extinction conducted under controlled laboratory conditions. Our synthesis highlights four findings.First, extinction theory largely considers individual, isolated populations. However, species interactions frequently altered or even reversed the influence of environmental factors on population extinction as compared to single-species conditions, highlighting the need to integrate community ecology into population theory. 2. While most single-species studies qualitatively agree with theoretical predictions, studies are needed that quantitatively compare observed and predicted extinction rates. A quantitative understanding of extinction processes is needed to further advance theory and to predict population extinction resulting from human activities. 3. Many stresses leading to population extinction can be assuaged by migration between subpopulations. However, too much migration increases synchrony between subpopulations and thus increases extinction risk. Research is needed to determine how to strike a balance that maximizes the benefit of migration. 4. Results from laboratory experiments often conflict with field studies. Understanding these inconsistencies is crucial for extending extinction theory to natural populations.

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Experimental Studies of Extinction Dynamics

Cited by 97 publications

References 18 publications

Loss of speciation rate will impoverish future diversity

Loss of speciation rate will impoverish future diversity

Elevated nonlinearity as an indicator of shifts in the dynamics of populations under stress

A review of extinction in experimental populations

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