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Ecosystems can undergo sudden shifts to undesirable states, but recentstudies with simple single species ecosystems have demonstrated that advancewarning can be provided by the slowing down of population dynamics near atipping point. However, it is not clear how this effect of critical slowingdown will manifest in ecosystems with strong interactions between theircomponents. Here we probe the dynamics of an experimental producer parasiteecosystem as it approaches a catastrophic collapse. Surprisingly, the producerpopulation grows in size as the environment deteriorates, highlighting thatpopulation size can be a misleading measure of ecosystem stability. Byanalyzing the oscillatory producer parasite dynamics for over ~100 generationsin multiple environmental conditions, we found that the collective ecosystemdynamics slows down as the tipping point is approached. Analysis of the coupleddynamics of interacting populations may therefore be necessary to provideadvance warning of collapse in complex communities.

Dynamics of a producer-parasite ecosystem on the brink of collapse