Stability is a central property of complex systems and encompasses multiple dimensions such as resistance, resilience, recovery, and invariability. How these dimensions correlate among them is focus of recent ecological research, but empirical evidence at regional scales, at which conservation decisions are usually made, remains absent. Using a field-based manipulative experiment conducted in two marine intertidal regions, we analyze the correlations among different aspects of stability in functioning (community cover) and composition of local communities facing a press disturbance. The experiment involved the removal of the local space-dominant species for 35 months in eight sites under different environmental regimes in northern- and southern-central Chile (ca. 30 and 40°S, respectively). After the disturbance, the magnitude of the initial responses and the recovery patterns were similar among communities dominated by different species, but varied between the functional and compositional response variables, and among four dimensions of stability. The recovery trajectories in function and composition remained mostly uncorrelated across the system. Yet, larger initial functional responses were associated with faster recovery trajectories—high functional resilience, in turn, was associated with both, high and low variability in the pattern of recovery. Finally, the compositional stability dimensions were independent from each other. The results suggest that varying community compositions can perform similar levels of functioning, which might be the result of strong compensatory dynamics among species competing for space in these communities. Knowledge of several, and sometimes independent, aspects of stability is mandatory to fully describe the stability of complex ecological systems.

中文翻译：

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海洋底栖生态系统稳定性的高维

稳定性是复杂系统的核心属性，包含多个维度，例如阻力、弹性、恢复和不变性。这些维度之间如何关联是最近生态研究的重点，但通常在区域尺度上做出保护决策的经验证据仍然缺乏。使用在两个海洋潮间带区域进行的实地操作实验，我们分析了功能稳定性（社区覆盖）的不同方面与面临新闻干扰的当地社区组成之间的相关性。该实验涉及在智利北部和中南部（分别为南纬 30 度和 40 度）不同环境条件下的 8 个地点移除当地空间优势物种 35 个月。风波过后，不同物种主导的群落的初始反应幅度和恢复模式相似，但在功能和组成反应变量之间以及稳定性的四个维度之间有所不同。功能和组成的恢复轨迹在整个系统中基本保持不相关。然而，较大的初始功能反应与更快的恢复轨迹相关——反过来，高功能弹性与恢复模式的高低变异性相关。最后，成分稳定性维度彼此独立。结果表明，不同的群落组成可以执行相似的功能水平，这可能是这些群落中竞争空间的物种之间强烈的补偿动态的结果。