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In 1997, Grimm and Wissel made an inventory of 167 definitions used in the literature and found 70 different stability concepts. [5] One of the strategies that these two authors proposed to clarify the subject is to replace ecological stability with more specific terms, such as constancy, resilience and persistence. In order to fully describe ...
Hysteresis is an important concept in alternative stable state theory. In this ecological context, hysteresis refers to the existence of different stable states under the same variables or parameters. Hysteresis can be explained by "path-dependency", in which the equilibrium point for the trajectory of "A → B" is different from for "B → A ...
Resistance is one of the major aspects of ecological stability.Volker Grimm and Christian Wissel identified 70 terms and 163 distinct definitions of the various aspects of ecological stability, but found that they could be reduced to three fundamental properties: "staying essentially unchanged", "returning to the reference state...after a temporary disturbance" and "persistence through time of ...
The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system.
Therefore, his theory represents what may be called 'control-hierarchical organicism' as against 'mutualistic organicism'." [2] While Warming might have been the first to propose an organismic theory of ecological communities, one of the first to elaborate such a theory has been the limnologist, zoologist and ecologist August Thienemann.
F. Stuart Chapin and co-authors emphasize that ecosystem management is guided by ecological science to ensure the long-term sustainability of ecosystem services, [9] while Norman Christensen and coauthors emphasize that it is motivated by defined goals, employs adaptive practices, and accounts for the complexities of ecological systems. [10]
Once virtually all members of the population use this strategy, there is no 'rational' alternative. ESS is part of classical game theory. In an evolutionarily stable state, a population's genetic composition is restored by selection after a disturbance, if the disturbance is not too large. An evolutionarily stable state is a dynamic property of ...
Ecological extinction is an example of a definitive point of no return. Ecological thresholds are often characterized by hysteresis, which means the dependence of the state of a system on the history of its state. Even when the change is not irreversible, the return path from altered to original state can be drastically different from the ...