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The predictability of ecological stability in a noisy world

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 251–259 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Random environmental variation, or stochasticity, is a key determinant of ecological dynamics. While we have some appreciation of how environmental stochasticity can moderate the variability and persistence of communities, we know little about its implications for the nature and predictability of ecological responses to large perturbations. Here, we show that shifts in the temporal autocorrelation (colour) of environmental noise provoke trade-offs in ecological stability across a wide range of different food-web structures by stabilizing dynamics in some dimensions, while simultaneously destabilizing them in others. Specifically, increasingly positive autocorrelation (reddening) of environmental noise increases resilience by hastening the recovery of food webs following a large perturbation, but reduces their resistance to perturbation and increases their temporal variability (reduces biomass stability). In contrast, all stability dimensions become less predictable, showing increased variability around the mean response, as environmental noise reddens. Moreover, we found environmental reddening to be a considerably more important determinant of stability than intrinsic food-web characteristics. These findings reveal the fundamental and dominant role played by environmental stochasticity in determining the dynamics and stability of ecosystems, and extend our understanding of how the multiple dimensions of stability relate to each other beyond simple white noise environments.

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Fig. 1: Quantification of ecological stability dimensions.
Fig. 2: Stability responses of a single food-chain community to replicate regimes of environmental stochasticity along a gradient in temporal autocorrelation.
Fig. 3: General stability responses to changes in environmental autocorrelation across a diverse range of food-web modules.
Fig. 4: General stability responses to changes in the correlation of species responses to environmental fluctuations across a diverse range of food-web modules.
Fig. 5: Determinants of ecological stability in stochastic environments.

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Data availability

All core data, including the constructed communities, time series of environmental stochasticity and ecological stabilities, and R codes for generating the results and figures of this paper, are available at https://github.com/qiang-yang-ecology/Yang.et.al.stochasticity.stability.NEE.

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Acknowledgements

Q.Y. was funded by a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship from the Irish Research Council (GOIPG/2013/1474).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Qiang Yang, Andrew L. Jackson & Ian Donohue

  2. Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Qiang Yang

  3. Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Mike S. Fowler

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Q.Y., I.D., A.L.J. and M.S.F. designed the research. Q.Y. performed the numerical simulations and analysed the data. Q.Y. and I.D. drafted the text. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ian Donohue.

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Yang, Q., Fowler, M.S., Jackson, A.L. et al. The predictability of ecological stability in a noisy world. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 251–259 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0794-x

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