Abstract
ARISING FROM R. Wang et al. Nature 492, 419–422 (2012)10.1038/nature11655
Potential early warning signals for regime shifts are studied intensively in the field of ecology1,2,3,4. Wang and colleagues1 investigated changes in the sediment diatom composition of Lake Erhai, China, and concluded that a regime shift in diatom assemblages that occurred around 2001 was preceded by flickering behaviour for 10 to 30 years. We propose that their results may be more reflective of their data processing than of the diatom data. Although flickering behaviour before regime shifts may be observed in some palaeoenvironmental records, we question whether this behaviour applies to diatoms in Lake Erhai. There is a Reply to this Brief Communication Arising by Wang, R. et al. Nature 498, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12273 (2013).
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Wang, R. et al. Flickering gives early warning signals of a critical transition to a eutrophic lake state. Nature 492, 419–422 (2012)
Scheffer, M. et al. Early-warning signals for critical transitions. Nature 461, 53–59 (2009)
Drake, J. M. & Griffen, B. D. Early warning signals of extinction in deteriorating environments. Nature 467, 456–459 (2010)
Scheffer, M. et al. Anticipating critical transitions. Science 338, 344–348 (2012)
Schulz, M. & Stattegger, K. Spectrum: spectral analysis of unevenly spaced paleoclimatic time series. Comput. Geosci. 23, 929–945 (1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
J.C. instigated the writing of the Comment. J.C. and R.J.T. carried out statistical analyses. J.C., R.J.T. and H.J.B.B. discussed the results and contributed to writing the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
Declared none.
PowerPoint slides
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carstensen, J., Telford, R. & Birks, H. Diatom flickering prior to regime shift. Nature 498, E11–E12 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12272
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12272
This article is cited by
-
Learning from the past: opportunities for advancing ecological research and practice using palaeoecological data
Oecologia (2022)
-
New insights into the termination of the African Humid Period (5.5 ka BP) in central Ethiopia from detailed analysis of a diatom record
Journal of Paleolimnology (2019)
-
Rising variance and abrupt shifts of subfossil chironomids due to eutrophication in a deep sub-alpine lake
Aquatic Ecology (2017)
-
Wang et al. reply
Nature (2013)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.