ISEM, CNRS, Univ. Montpellier, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France.
Department of Zoology, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Ecol Lett. 2019 Sep;22(9):1349-1356. doi: 10.1111/ele.13340. Epub 2019 Jul 8.
The concept of ecological stability occupies a prominent place in both fundamental and applied ecological research. We review decades of work on the topic and examine how our understanding has progressed. We show that our understanding of stability has remained fragmented and is limited largely to simple or simplified systems. There has been a profusion of metrics proposed to quantify stability, of which only a handful are used commonly. Furthermore, studies typically quantify one to two metrics of stability at a time and in response to a single perturbation, with some of the main environmental pressures of today being the least studied. We argue that we need to build on the existing consensus and strong theoretical foundation of the stability concept to better understand its multidimensionality and the interdependencies between metrics, levels of organisation and types of perturbations. Only by doing so can we make progress in the quantification of stability in theory and in practice, and eventually build a more comprehensive understanding of how ecosystems will respond to ongoing environmental change.
生态稳定性的概念在基础和应用生态学研究中占据着突出的地位。我们回顾了几十年来在该主题上的研究工作，并考察了我们的理解是如何进展的。我们表明，我们对稳定性的理解仍然是零散的，并且主要局限于简单或简化的系统。已经提出了大量的指标来量化稳定性，其中只有少数几个被广泛使用。此外，研究通常一次量化一到两个稳定性指标，并针对单一的扰动，而当今一些主要的环境压力则是研究最少的。我们认为，我们需要在稳定性概念的现有共识和强大理论基础上再接再厉，以更好地理解其多维性以及指标、组织层次和扰动类型之间的相互依存关系。只有这样，我们才能在理论和实践中推进稳定性的量化，并最终更全面地了解生态系统将如何应对持续的环境变化。
