摘要：In this paper, we review the empirical evidence of discontinuous distributions in complexsystems within the context of panarchy theory and discuss the significance of discontinuities forunderstanding emergent properties such as resilience. Over specific spatial-temporal scale ranges, complexsystems can configure in a variety of regimes, each defined by a characteristic set of self-organized structuresand processes. A system may remain within a regime or dramatically shift to another regime. Understandingthe drivers of regime shifts has provided critical insight into system structure and resilience. Althoughanalyses of regime shifts have tended to focus on the system level, new evidence suggests that the samesystem behaviors operate within scales. In essence, complex systems exhibit multiple dynamic regimesnested within the larger system, each of which operates at a particular scale. Discrete size classes observedin variables in complex systems are evidence of these multiple regimes within complex systems, and thediscontinuities between size classes indicate changes in scale
