Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Criticality and disturbance in spatial ecological systems.

Mercedes Pascual1, Frédéric Guichard

  • 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1048, USA. pascual@umich.edu

Trends in Ecology & Evolution
|May 17, 2006
PubMed
Summary

Criticality in ecology explains sudden system shifts and spatial patchiness. Understanding disturbance and recovery scales is key to predicting these ecological threshold behaviors.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

From multiplicity of infection to force of infection in sparsely sampled high-transmission <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i> populations.

eLife·2026
Same author

Beyond Temperature: Relative Humidity Systematically Shifts Juvenile Thermal Performance and Projected Population Growth in a Malaria Vector.

Ecology letters·2026
Same author

Spatially-nested topologies stabilize meta-ecosystems via cross-scale source-sink dynamics.

Ecology·2026
Same author

Humidity shapes the thermal niche of <i>Anopheles stephensi</i>, an invasive malaria vector.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026
Same author

Socioeconomic and household water management determinants of malaria and other vector-borne disease prevention in Urban Gujarat, India.

Malaria journal·2026
Same author

Author Correction: Malaria trends in Ethiopian highlands track the 2000 'slowdown' in global warming.

Nature communications·2026

Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Theoretical Ecology
  • Ecological Modeling

Background:

  • Classical criticality describes abrupt system state changes due to minor process alterations.
  • Criticality is characterized by emergent patchiness without a dominant spatial scale, bridging threshold behavior and spatial ecology.
  • Ecological criticality often involves disturbance and recovery processes, influencing system dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review and distinguish three types of critical systems: classical phase transitions, self-organized criticality (SOC), and 'robust' criticality.
  • To explore the implications of these critical types for ecological threshold behavior and intermittent temporal fluctuations.
  • To examine the role of spatial and temporal scales in understanding criticality in ecological interactions.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Review of properties defining classical phase transitions, self-organized criticality (SOC), and 'robust' criticality.
  • Analysis of spatial stochastic models for predator-prey, infected-susceptible, and disturbance-recovery interactions.
  • Synthesis of findings related to threshold dynamics and temporal fluctuations in critical ecological systems.

Main Results:

  • Distinguishes three critical system types based on disturbance and recovery scales.
  • Demonstrates how spatial patchiness alone is insufficient to predict sudden ecological changes.
  • Highlights the importance of integrating spatial and temporal scales of disturbance and recovery for accurate prediction.

Conclusions:

  • Ecological criticality involves complex interactions between threshold dynamics and spatial patchiness.
  • Predicting sudden ecological changes requires considering both spatial patterns and the scales of underlying processes.
  • The scales of disturbance and recovery are critical determinants of ecological system behavior at critical transitions.