The evolution of ecosystem ascendency in a complex systems based model

JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

卷:428

Article

Brinck, Katharina¹  Jensen, Henrik Jeldtoft¹ 

[1] Imperial Coll London, Dept Math, Ctr Complex Sci, London SW7 2AZ, England

关键词: Ascendency;    Ecosystem organisation;    Evolution;    Ecological networks;    Development;    Modelling;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.06.010

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

General patterns in ecosystem development can shed light on driving forces behind ecosystem formation and recovery and have been of long interest. In recent years, the need for integrative and process oriented approaches to capture ecosystem growth, development and organisation, as well as the scope of information theory as a descriptive tool has been addressed from various sides. However data collection of ecological network flows is difficult and tedious and comprehensive models are lacking. We use a hierarchical version of the Tangled Nature Model of evolutionary ecology to study the relationship between structure, flow and organisation in model ecosystems, their development over evolutionary time scales and their relation to ecosystem stability. Our findings support the validity of ecosystem ascendency as a meaningful measure of ecosystem organisation, which increases over evolutionary time scales and significantly drops during periods of disturbance. The results suggest a general trend towards both higher integrity and increased stability driven by functional and structural ecosystem coadaptation. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free