The monitoring of ecosystems and the spread of information concerning their state among human stakeholders is often a lengthy process. The importance of mutual feedbacks between socioeconomic and ecological dynamics is being increasingly recognised in recent studies, but it is generally assumed that the feedback from the environment is instantaneous, ignoring any delay in the spread of ecosystem knowledge

Although the effects of species diversity on food web stability have long been recognized, relatively little is known about the influence of intraspecific diversity. Empirical work has found that intraspecific diversity can increase community resilience and resistance, but few theoretical studies have attempted to use modeling approaches to determine how intraspecific diversity will affect food web

The mid-domain effect states that in a spatially bounded domain species richness tends to decrease from the center towards the boundary, thus producing a peak or plateau of species richness in the middle of the domain even in the absence of any environmental gradient. This effect has been frequently used to describe geographic richness gradients of trophically similar species, but how it scales across

Ecotourism is potentially capable of making biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management economically feasible. Here, we propose a simple model for ecotourism development considering the heterogeneity of tourists, motivated by the case of Jeju Island, South Korea. We analyze the optimal investment in accommodation capacity (i.e., hotels, restaurants, and transportation) and in improving the quality

Over the past century, the Earth has experienced roughly 0.4–0.8 ∘C rise in the average temperature and which is projected to increase between 1.4 and 5.8 ∘C by the year 2100. The increase in the Earth’s temperature directly influences physiological traits of individual species in ecosystems. However, the effect of these changes in community dynamics, so far, remains relatively unknown. Here, we show

The representation of carbon allocation (CA) in ecosystem differs tremendously among models, resulting in diverse responses of carbon cycling and storage to global change. Several studies have highlighted discrepancies between empirical observations and model predictions, attributing these differences to problems of model structure. We analyzed the mathematical representation of CA in models using

Abstract Resource pulses are widespread phenomena in diverse ecosystems. Irruptions of generalist consumers and corresponding generalist predators often follow such resource pulses. This can have severe implications on the ecosystem and also on the spread of diseases or on regional famines. Suitable management strategies are necessary to deal with these systems. In this study, we develop a general

Abstract Tallgrass prairie has been reduced to a fraction of its original extent, due to rapid conversion to other land use types, especially agricultural and urban. Restoration is a relatively new process to convert agricultural land back to communities dominated by native vegetation. We used a differential equations compartmental model to quantify changes between land use types, incorporating the

Abstract Since it was defined by Hutchinson, in 1957, the fundamental niche has been assumed, implicitly or explicitly, to have some convex shape. This assumption requires some critical analysis. In this work, we examine the special case of Grinnellian niches (those composed by sets of points of non-interactive variables in multidimensional spaces). We show that annual species in seasonal environments

Abstract In this article, we present a modern commentary on Ludwig, Jones, and Holling’s classic paper, “Qualitative analysis of insect outbreak systems: the spruce budworm and forest,” published in the Journal of Animal Ecology in 1978. In contrast to papers that become classics for advancing one big idea, Ludwig et al.’s contribution is striking for its breadth of impact. It has become a foundational

Abstract In this article, a new mathematical method for static analysis of compartmental systems is developed in the context of ecology. The method is based on the novel system and subsystem partitioning methodologies through which compartmental systems are decomposed to the utmost level. That is, the distribution of environmental inputs and intercompartmental system flows as well as the organization

Abstract We analyze the model of costly signalling theory and show that dishonest signalling is still a possible outcome even for costly indices that cannot be faked. We assume that signallers pay the cost for sending a signal and that the cost correlates negatively with signaller’s quality q and correlates positively with signal’s strength s. We show that for any given function f with continuous derivative

Abstract The relationship between species richness and productivity changes with spatial scale, but the way in which it changes and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We address this critical knowledge gap using a new mechanistic model of the spatial scaling of species richness–productivity (SP) relationships for a local community. Our model is neutral and hence assumes that species dynamics

Abstract We study how the complexity of evolutionary dynamics in the classic MacArthur consumer-resource model depends on resource uptake and utilization rates. The traditional assumption in such models is that the utilization rate of the consumer is proportional to the uptake rate. More generally, we show that if these two rates are related through a power law (which includes the traditional assumption

Abstract The impact of the variation of the number of functional traits on functional diversity assessment is still poorly known. Although the covariation between these two parameters may be desirable in some situations (e.g. if adding functional traits provides relevant new functional information), it may also result from mathematical artefacts and lead to misinterpretation of the results obtained

Abstract One of the most widely verified empirical regularities of ecology is Taylor’s power law of fluctuation scaling, or simply Taylor’s law (TL). TL says that the logarithm of the variances of a set of random variables or a set of random samples is (exactly or approximately) a linear function of logarithm of the means of the corresponding random variables or random samples: logvariance = log a + b log mean

Abstract A new mathematical method for the static analysis of ecological systems has recently been developed by the author and was presented in a separate article. Based on this methodology, multiple new ecological system measures and indices of matrix, vector, and scalar types are systematically introduced in the present paper. These mathematical system analysis tools are quantitative ecological indicators

Abstract The use of critical slowing down as an early warning indicator for regime switching in observations from noisy dynamical systems and models has been widely studied and implemented in recent years. Some systems, however, have been shown to avoid critical slowing down prior to a transition between equilibria (Ditlevsen and Johnsen 2010; Hastings and Wysham Ecology Letters 13(4):464–472 2010)

Abstract Local interactions among individual members of a population can generate intricate small-scale spatial structure, which can strongly influence population dynamics. The two-way interplay between local interactions and population dynamics is well understood in the relatively simple case where the population occupies a fixed domain with a uniform average density. However, the situation where

Abstract Resource-limited complex systems are ubiquitous in the natural world, as is the potential for instability in such systems. Classic models of interacting species have provided a basis for our understanding of stability in these systems, and suggest that stable coexistence requires weak, rare, and asymmetric interactions. But missing from these models is an explicit understanding of how resource

Abstract Whether species diversity contributes to the ecosystem stability has been one of the most heated arguments in community ecology. Potentially different contributions of different ecosystem species have not been explicitly taken into account. With fig species and their associated fig wasp community as model system, we bring community structure into the “diversity-stability” debate by establishing

Abstract Chaotic systems are sensitive to small changes in parameters and initial conditions, but are spatially distributed chaotic populations sensitive to the location of perturbations within their domain? Here, we examine the transient responses to perturbation in a density-dependent population model with asymmetrical dispersal, where offspring are moved some distance downstream of the parent population

The original version of this article unfortunately contains an incorrect panel (b) in Fig. 1 introduced during the production process.

Abstract Ephemeral wetlands or kettle holes contain an often unique biodiversity of flora and fauna. In New Zealand, they can be an important breeding ground for iconic taonga species such as kakī/black stilt. Understanding the possible effects of climate change on the holes is a challenge as there is often limited information on the local hydrology, restricting the applicability of established hydrological

Abstract Explaining coexistence in species-rich communities of primary producers remains a challenge for ecologists because of their likely competition for shared resources. Following Hutchinson’s seminal suggestion, many theoreticians have tried to create diversity through a fluctuating environment, which impairs or slows down competitive exclusion. However, fluctuating environment models often only

Abstract An essential topic in theoretical ecology is the extinction of populations subject to demographic stochasticity. Mechanistic models of demographic stochasticity, such as birth-death processes, can be analytically intractable, so are frequently approximated with stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Here, we consider two pitfalls in this type of approximation. First, familiar deterministic

Many anthropogenic stressors broadly inflict mortality or reduce fecundity, including habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, invasive species, and multispecies harvesting. Here, we show-in four analytical models of interspecies competition-that broadly inflicted stressors disproportionately cause competitive exclusions within groups of ecologically similar species. As a result, we predict

History matters when individual prior conditions contain important information about the fate of individuals. We present a general framework for demographic models which incorporates the effects of history on population dynamics. The framework incorporates prior condition into the i-state variable and includes an algorithm for constructing the population projection matrix from information on current

A tension between cooperation and conflict characterizes the behavioral dynamics of many social species. The foraging benefits of group living include increased efficiency and reduced need for vigilance, but social foraging can also encourage theft of captured prey from conspecifics. The payoffs of stealing prey from others (scrounging) versus capturing prey (producing) may depend not only on the frequency

Ecological theory about the dynamics of interacting populations is mainly based on unstructured models that account for species abundances only. In turn, these models constitute the basis for our understanding of the functioning of ecological communities and ecosystems and their responses to environmental change, natural disturbances and human impacts. Structured models that take into account differences

Mosquito-borne diseases contribute significantly to the global disease burden. High-profile elimination campaigns are currently underway for many parasites, e.g., Plasmodium spp., the causal agent of malaria. Sustaining momentum near the end of elimination programs is often difficult to achieve and consequently quantitative tools that enable monitoring the effectiveness of elimination activities after

Ecological theory predicts that the presence of temporal autocorrelation in environments can considerably affect population extinction risk. However, empirical estimates of autocorrelation values in animal populations have not decoupled intrinsic growth and density feedback processes from environmental autocorrelation. In this study we first discuss how the autocorrelation present in environmental

Does society benefit from private measures to mitigate infectious disease risks? Since mitigation reduces both peak prevalence and the number of people who fall ill, the answer might appear to be yes. But mitigation also prolongs epidemics and therefore the time susceptible people engage in activities to avoid infection. These avoidance activities come at a cost-in lost production or consumption, for

Measles was successfully eradicated in the Pan-American Health Region in 2002. However, maintenance of elimination in parts of Africa, Europe, the USA, and other regions is proving difficult, despite apparently high vaccine coverage. This may be due to the different age structure in developed and developing populations, as well as to differences in the duration of maternal immunity. We explore the

Classical life-history theory predicts that acute, immunizing pathogens should maximize between-host transmission. When such pathogens induce violent epidemic outbreaks, however, a pathogen's short-term advantage at invasion may come at the expense of its ability to persist in the population over the long term. Here, we seek to understand how the classical and invasion-persistence trade-offs interact

Dispersal is a fundamental biological process that results in the redistribution of organisms due to the interplay between the mode of dispersal, the range of scales over which movement occurs, and the scale of spatial heterogeneity, in which patchiness may occur across a broad range of scales. Despite the diversity of dispersal mechanisms and dispersal length scales in nature, we posit that a fundamental

Many autotrophs vary their allocation to nutrient uptake in response to environmental cues, yet the dynamics of this plasticity are largely unknown. Plasticity dynamics affect the extent of single versus multiple nutrient limitation and thus have implications for plant ecology and biogeochemical cycling. Here we use a model of two essential nutrients cycling through autotrophs and the environment to

Simple temporal models that ignore the spatial nature of interactions and track only changes in mean quantities, such as global densities, are typically used under the unrealistic assumption that individuals are well mixed. These so-called mean-field models are often considered overly simplified, given the ample evidence for distributed interactions and spatial heterogeneity over broad ranges of scales

Although parasites represent an important component of ecosystems, few field and theoretical studies have addressed the structure of parasites in food webs. We evaluate the structure of parasitic links in an extensive salt marsh food web, with a new model distinguishing parasitic links from non-parasitic links among free-living species. The proposed model is an extension of the niche model for food