Mathematics, University of Leicester, UK; Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Moscow, Russia.
Biology, Case Western Reserve University, USA.
Phys Life Rev. 2020 Mar;32:1-40. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2019.09.004. Epub 2019 Sep 13.
This paper discusses the recent progress in understanding the properties of transient dynamics in complex ecological systems. Predicting long-term trends as well as sudden changes and regime shifts in ecosystems dynamics is a major issue for ecology as such changes often result in population collapse and extinctions. Analysis of population dynamics has traditionally been focused on their long-term, asymptotic behavior whilst largely disregarding the effect of transients. However, there is a growing understanding that in ecosystems the asymptotic behavior is rarely seen. A big new challenge for theoretical and empirical ecology is to understand the implications of long transients. It is believed that the identification of the corresponding mechanisms along with the knowledge of scaling laws of the transient's lifetime should substantially improve the quality of long-term forecasting and crisis anticipation. Although transient dynamics have received considerable attention in physical literature, research into ecological transients is in its infancy and systematic studies are lacking. This text aims to partially bridge this gap and facilitate further progress in quantitative analysis of long transients in ecology. By revisiting and critically examining a broad variety of mathematical models used in ecological applications as well as empirical facts, we reveal several main mechanisms leading to the emergence of long transients and hence lays the basis for a unifying theory.
本文讨论了在理解复杂生态系统中瞬态动力学特性方面的最新进展。预测生态系统动力学的长期趋势以及突然变化和状态转变是生态学的一个主要问题，因为这些变化通常会导致种群崩溃和灭绝。种群动态的分析传统上一直集中在它们的长期、渐近行为上，而在很大程度上忽略了瞬态的影响。然而，人们越来越认识到，在生态系统中，渐近行为很少见。理论和经验生态学的一个新的重大挑战是理解长瞬态的影响。人们相信，随着对瞬态寿命的标度规律的认识以及对相应机制的识别，应该会大大提高长期预测和危机预警的质量。尽管瞬态动力学在物理文献中受到了相当多的关注，但生态瞬态的研究还处于起步阶段，系统的研究还很缺乏。本文旨在部分弥补这一差距，并促进生态学中长瞬态的定量分析的进一步发展。通过重新审视和批判性地检查在生态应用中使用的各种数学模型以及经验事实，我们揭示了导致长瞬态出现的几个主要机制，从而为统一理论奠定了基础。
