General statistical scaling laws for stability in ecological systems

Clark, Adam Thomas; Arnoldi, Jean‐François; Zelnik, Yuval R.; Barabás, György; Hodapp, Dorothee; Karakoç, Canan; König, Sara; Radchuk, Viktoriia; Donohue, Ian; Huth, Andreas; Jacquet, Claire; Mazancourt, Claire de; Mentges, Andrea; Nothaaß, Dorian; Shoemaker, Lauren G.; Taubert, Franziska; Wiegand, Thorsten; Wang, Shaopeng; Chase, Jonathan M.; Loreau, Michel; Harpole, W. Stanley

doi:10.1111/ele.13760

Cited by 38 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(100 reference statements)

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“…Rasher et al, 2020). Our results underscore the fundamental role of scale in understanding variability (Clark et al, 2021), including the pitfalls of not considering transience or legacy effects when interpreting the ecological consequences climatic events (Downing et al, 2008;Miller et al, 2021;Ross, Suzuki, al., 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Predators mitigate the destabilising effects of heatwaves on multitrophic stream communities

Ross

Molinos

Okuda

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

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Amidst the global extinction crisis, climate change will expose ecosystems to more frequent and intense extreme climatic events, such as heatwaves. Yet, whether predator species loss-a prevailing characteristic of the extinction crisis-will exacerbate the ecological consequences of extreme climatic events remains largely unknown. Here, we show that the loss of predator species can interact with heatwaves to moderate the compositional stability of ecosystems. We exposed multitrophic stream communities, with and without a dominant predator species, to realistic current and future heatwaves and found that heatwaves destabilised algal communities by homogenising them in space. However, this happened only when the predator was absent.Additional heatwave impacts on multiple aspects of stream communities, including changes to the structure of algal and macroinvertebrate communities, as well as total algal biomass and its temporal variability, were not apparent during heatwaves and emerged only after the heatwaves had passed. Taken together, our results suggest that the ecological consequences of heatwaves can amplify over time as their impacts propagate through biological interaction networks, but the presence of predators can help to buffer such impacts. These findings underscore the importance of conserving trophic structure, and highlight the potential for species extinctions to amplify the effects of climate change and extreme events.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Predators mitigate the destabilising effects of heatwaves on multitrophic stream communities

Ross

Molinos

Okuda

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

Self Cite

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“…Future field manipulative research in the study region should extend the spatial range examined to detect in full the predicted triphasic invariability-area relationship. Nevertheless, our experimental manipulations replicated in several communities revealed novel empirical scale-dependent patterns for compositional invariability and other stability dimensions (Clark et al 2021 for extrapolated scaling relationships). The use of percentage cover as a proxy for species abundances and an aggregate community-level property allowed us to analyse the spatial scaling of stability in both composition and function, respectively.…”

Section: Stability Increased With Areamentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Peterson et al (1998) proposed a hierarchical model where higher functional diversity in larger regions leads to greater compositional resilience (Holling 1973, Peterson et al 1998. To the best of our knowledge, however, the analysis of multiple stability dimensions across spatial scales is still incipient (Clark et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability of rocky intertidal communities, in response to species removal, varies across spatial scales

Valdivia

López

Fica-Rojas

et al. 2021

Oikos

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Improving our understanding of stability across spatial scales is crucial in the current scenario of biodiversity loss. Still, most empirical studies of stability target small scales. We experimentally removed the local space‐dominant species (macroalgae, barnacles, or mussels) at eight sites spanning more than 1000 km of coastline in north‐ and south‐central Chile, and quantified the relationship between area (the number of aggregated sites) and stability in aggregate community variables (total cover) and taxonomic composition. Resistance, recovery, and invariability increased nonlinearly with area in both functional and compositional domains. Yet, the functioning of larger areas achieved a better, albeit still incomplete, recovery than composition. Compared with controls, smaller disturbed areas tended to overcompensate in terms of total cover. These effects were related to enhanced available space for recruitment (resulting from the removal of the dominant species), and to increasing beta diversity and decaying community‐level spatial synchrony (resulting from increasing area). This study provides experimental evidence for the pivotal role of spatial scale in the ability of ecosystems to resist and recover from chronic disturbances. This knowledge can inform further ecosystem restoration and conservation policies.

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“…Using common 'currencies' of the components of resilience/stability (e.g. Capdevila et al, 2020;Clark et al, 2021;Ingrisch & Bahn, 2018)-or at least determining 'conversion factors' across different metrics-will make comparisons among studies possible, opening up the possibility of much-needed global assessments of resilience.…”

Section: Conceptualising and Operationalising Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this sense, Ingrisch and Bahn (2018) provide an extensive review on how to standardise measures of resilience across systems. Using a unified approach will facilitate comparisons among different systems and scales of biological organisation (Clark et al, 2021;Ingrisch & Bahn, 2018), as well as linking theoretical and observational studies. Beyond that, common metrics will help to find global patterns of resilience across different systems (e.g.…”

Section: Con Clus Ionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconciling resilience across ecological systems, species and subdisciplines

et al. 2021

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Resilience has emerged as a key concept in ecology and conservation biology to understand and predict ecosystem responses to global change. In its broadest sense, resilience describes the ability of an ecosystem to resist, and recover from, a disturbance. However, the application of such a concept in different subdisciplines of ecology and in different study systems has resulted in a wide disparity of definitions and ways of quantifying resilience. This Special Feature, which spans the Journal of Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology and Functional Ecology, provides an overview of how ecologists define, quantify, compare and predict resilience across different study systems. The 29 contributions to this Special Feature show the broad range of approaches used by ecologists to study resilience. Almost half of the contributions (48%) study resilience at the community level, with a 30% of them studying resilience at multiple levels of biological organisation. A large proportion of these articles are observational (42%), experimental (14%) or a combination of both (17%) while a 17% utilise theoretical or computational approaches. Although 38%, 21% and 14% of the studies were based solely on plants, animals or micro‐organisms, respectively, 17% of them incorporated these multiple trophic levels. Synthesis. A unified ecological understanding of resilience across systems and taxa requires a trans‐disciplinary consensus on what resilience actually is and how to best measure it. Here, we provide an overview of how ecologists define, quantify, compare and predict resilience across different ecological systems and subdisciplines, with reference to the diverse approaches used by contributions to this Special Feature. We identify four key recommendations to harmonise future efforts in resilience research: (a) define resilience using existing theoretical frameworks; (b) use common and comparable metrics to measure resilience; (c) clearly contextualise and define the pre‐ and post‐disturbance state of the ecological system and (d) consider explicitly the disturbance type and regime impacting the system.

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General statistical scaling laws for stability in ecological systems

Cited by 38 publications

References 51 publications

Predators mitigate the destabilising effects of heatwaves on multitrophic stream communities

Predators mitigate the destabilising effects of heatwaves on multitrophic stream communities

Stability of rocky intertidal communities, in response to species removal, varies across spatial scales

Reconciling resilience across ecological systems, species and subdisciplines

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