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Human impacts on multiple ecological networks act synergistically to drive ecosystem collapse
Author(s) -
Valiente-Banuet Alfonso,
Verdú Miguel
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
frontiers in ecology and the environment
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.918
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1540-9309
pISSN - 1540-9295
DOI - 10.1890/130002
Subject(s) - ecosystem , ecology , biodiversity , biological dispersal , overexploitation , ecosystem services , ecological network , ecological resilience , environmental resource management , resilience (materials science) , seed dispersal , ecosystem engineer , psychological resilience , environmental science , biology , population , psychology , physics , demography , sociology , psychotherapist , thermodynamics
Highly biodiverse ecosystems worldwide are rapidly losing species diversity as a result of human overexploitation of natural resources. However, it is not known whether there is a critical threshold of species loss at which an ecosystem fails to recover, leading to its collapse. By combining multiple ecological networks (including facilitation, pollination, and seed dispersal) into a realistic scenario, we document how an ecosystem may collapse through synergistic disruptions to those networks. Although the interdependence of different ecological networks is indicative of ecosystem fragility and low resilience, our findings may improve environmental remediation efforts, thereby helping to bridge the gap between the disciplines of ecology and conservation biology.