Chaotic dynamics are thought to be rare in natural populations but this may be due to methodological and data limitations, rather than the inherent stability of ecosystems. Following extensive simulation testing, we applied multiple chaos detection methods to a global database of 172 population time series and found evidence for chaos in >30%. In contrast, fitting traditional one-dimensional models identified <10% as chaotic. Chaos was most prevalent among plankton and insects and least among birds and mammals. Lyapunov exponents declined with generation time and scaled as the −1/6 power of body mass among chaotic populations. These results demonstrate that chaos is not rare in natural populations, indicating that there may be intrinsic limits to ecological forecasting and cautioning against the use of steady-state approaches to conservation and management.

混沌动力学在自然种群中被认为是罕见的，但这可能是由于方法和数据的限制，而不是生态系统的固有稳定性。经过广泛的模拟测试，我们将多种混沌检测方法应用于 172 个人口时间序列的全球数据库，并发现 >30% 的混沌证据。相比之下，拟合传统的一维模型将 <10% 确定为混沌。混沌在浮游生物和昆虫中最为普遍，在鸟类和哺乳动物中最少。Lyapunov 指数随着世代时间而下降，并以混沌种群中体重的-1/6 次方为比例。这些结果表明，混乱在自然种群中并不罕见，