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Direct observation of increasing recovery length before collapse of a marine benthic ecosystem

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, Article number: 0153 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

Ecosystems can experience catastrophic transitions to alternative states, yet recent results have suggested that slowing down in rates of recovery after a perturbation may provide advance warning that a critical transition is approaching. Perturbation experiments with microbial populations have supported this hypothesis under controlled laboratory conditions, but evidence from natural ecosystems remains rare. Here, we manipulated rocky intertidal canopy algae to test the hypothesis that the spatial scale at which the system recovers from a perturbation in space should increase as the system approaches the tipping point, marking the transition from a canopy-dominated to a turf-dominated state. Empirical estimates of recovery length, a recently proposed spatial indicator of an approaching tipping point, were obtained by comparing the spatial scale at which algal turfs propagated into canopy-degraded regions with decreasing canopy cover. We show that recovery length increased along the gradient in canopy degradation, providing field-based evidence of spatial signatures of critical slowing down in natural conditions.

Ecological shifts are increasingly observed in natural systems as diverse as shallow lakes, coral reefs and savannahs1–3. The ubiquity of such phenomena has stimulated research on early warning signals to forewarn the approach of a system to a tipping point4. There is a growing interest in using the phenomenon of ‘critical slowing down’ to measure the distance of a system to a critical threshold5,6. According to theory, a system that is approaching a critical threshold recovers more slowly from perturbations and may experience a change in the pattern of fluctuations4,5,7. This phenomenon may also be signalled by generic indicators of an approaching tipping point, such as increasing variance and autocorrelation of state variables. Critical slowing down and early warning signals have been evaluated using correlative approaches (for example, through the analysis of time series and spatial data), simulations and experiments8–15.

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Figure 1: Canopy degradation leads to a regime shift from a canopy- to a turf-dominated state.
Figure 2: Schematic illustration of the experiment and measurement of the recovery length.
Figure 3: Canopy degradation enhanced the propagation of algal turfs into the experimental transects.
Figure 4: Simulations of the spatial version of turf– Cystoseiramodel show an increase in the spatial scale of turf propagation along a gradient of canopy degradation.
Figure 5: Recovery length.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Maggi, F. Bulleri, C. Ravaglioli and L. Tamburello for field and technical assistance, A. Rattray for useful comments on the manuscript, A. Perez-Escudero for helping to develop the model, R. Casagrandi and L. Mari for their feedback. The authors acknowledge financial support from University of Pisa through the PRA (PRA_2015_055) and MISTI projects, the latter in collaboration with MIT. J.G. also acknowledges support from an NIH New Innovator Award (DP2 AG044279).

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Author notes

  1. Martina Dal Bello

    Present address: †Present address: Physics of Living Systems, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 400 Technology Square, NE46-609, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.,

  2. Lei Dai

    Present address: ‡Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Pisa, CoNISMa, Via Derna 1, Pisa 56126, Italy

    Luca Rindi, Martina Dal Bello & Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi

  2. Department of Physics, Physics of Living Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 400 Technology Square, NE46-609, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

    Lei Dai & Jeff Gore

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  1. Luca Rindi
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Contributions

L.R. and L.B.-C. designed the study. L.R. did the analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. M.D.B., L.D. and J.G. assisted with the analysis. L.R., M.D.B and L.B.-C. performed the experiment. All authors contributed to interpreting the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Luca Rindi.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods; Supplementary Figures 1–7; Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 3240 kb)

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Rindi, L., Bello, M., Dai, L. et al. Direct observation of increasing recovery length before collapse of a marine benthic ecosystem. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0153 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0153

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