期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2019
卷号：116
期号：51
页码：25714-25720
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1904470116
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Understanding the stability of ecological communities is a matter of increasing importance in the context of global environmental change. Yet it has proved to be a challenging task. Different metrics are used to assess the stability of ecological systems, and the choice of one metric over another may result in conflicting conclusions. Although each of the multitude of metrics is useful for answering a specific question about stability, the relationship among metrics is poorly understood. Such lack of understanding prevents scientists from developing a unified concept of stability. Instead, by investigating these relationships we can unveil how many dimensions of stability there are (i.e., in how many independent components stability metrics can be grouped), which should help build a more comprehensive concept of stability. Here we simultaneously measured 27 stability metrics frequently used in ecological studies. Our approach is based on dynamical simulations of multispecies trophic communities under different perturbation scenarios. Mapping the relationships between the metrics revealed that they can be lumped into 3 main groups of relatively independent stability components: early response to pulse, sensitivities to press, and distance to threshold. Selecting metrics from each of these groups allows a more accurate and comprehensive quantification of the overall stability of ecological communities. These results contribute to improving our understanding and assessment of stability in ecological communities.
关键词：stability ; food webs ; networks ; ecological community
