Dataset Information

Resilience and regime shifts in a marine biodiversity hotspot.

ABSTRACT: Complex natural systems, spanning from individuals and populations to ecosystems and social-ecological systems, often exhibit abrupt reorganizations in response to changing stressors, known as regime shifts or critical transitions. Theory suggests that such systems feature folded stability landscapes with fluctuating resilience, fold-bifurcations, and alternate basins of attraction. However, the implementation of such features to elucidate response mechanisms in an empirical context is scarce, due to the lack of generic approaches to quantify resilience dynamics in individual natural systems. Here, we introduce an Integrated Resilience Assessment (IRA) framework: a three-step analytical process to assess resilience and construct stability landscapes of empirical systems. The proposed framework involves a multivariate analysis to estimate holistic system indicator variables, non-additive modelling to estimate alternate attractors, and a quantitative resilience assessment to scale stability landscapes. We implement this framework to investigate the temporal development of the Mediterranean marine communities in response to sea warming during 1985-2013, using fisheries landings data. Our analysis revealed a nonlinear tropicalisation of the Mediterranean Sea, expressed as abrupt shifts to regimes dominated by thermophilic species. The approach exemplified here for the Mediterranean Sea, revealing previously unknown resilience dynamics driven by climate forcing, can elucidate resilience and shifts in other complex systems.

SUBMITTER: Vasilakopoulos P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5651905 | biostudies-other | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Resilience and regime shifts in a marine biodiversity hotspot.

Vasilakopoulos Paraskevas P Raitsos Dionysios E DE Tzanatos Evangelos E Maravelias Christos D CD

Scientific reports 20171020 1

Complex natural systems, spanning from individuals and populations to ecosystems and social-ecological systems, often exhibit abrupt reorganizations in response to changing stressors, known as regime shifts or critical transitions. Theory suggests that such systems feature folded stability landscapes with fluctuating resilience, fold-bifurcations, and alternate basins of attraction. However, the implementation of such features to elucidate response mechanisms in an empirical context is scarce, d ...[more]

PMID: 29057946

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Project description:Ecological systems are vulnerable to irreversible change when key system properties are pushed over thresholds, resulting in the loss of resilience and the precipitation of a regime shift. Perhaps the most important of such properties in human-modified landscapes is the total amount of remnant native vegetation. In a seminal study Andrén proposed the existence of a fragmentation threshold in the total amount of remnant vegetation, below which landscape-scale connectivity is eroded and local species richness and abundance become dependent on patch size. Despite the fact that species patch-area effects have been a mainstay of conservation science there has yet to be a robust empirical evaluation of this hypothesis. Here we present and test a new conceptual model describing the mechanisms and consequences of biodiversity change in fragmented landscapes, identifying the fragmentation threshold as a first step in a positive feedback mechanism that has the capacity to impair ecological resilience, and drive a regime shift in biodiversity. The model considers that local extinction risk is defined by patch size, and immigration rates by landscape vegetation cover, and that the recovery from local species losses depends upon the landscape species pool. Using a unique dataset on the distribution of non-volant small mammals across replicate landscapes in the Atlantic forest of Brazil, we found strong evidence for our model predictions--that patch-area effects are evident only at intermediate levels of total forest cover, where landscape diversity is still high and opportunities for enhancing biodiversity through local management are greatest. Furthermore, high levels of forest loss can push native biota through an extinction filter, and result in the abrupt, landscape-wide loss of forest-specialist taxa, ecological resilience and management effectiveness. The proposed model links hitherto distinct theoretical approaches within a single framework, providing a powerful tool for analysing the potential effectiveness of management interventions.

Dataset Information

Resilience and regime shifts in a marine biodiversity hotspot.

Publications

Resilience and regime shifts in a marine biodiversity hotspot.

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