Chaos theory discloses triggers and drivers of plankton dynamics in stable environment

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Despite the enticing discoveries of chaos in nature, triggers and drivers of this phenomenon remain a classical enigma which needs irrefutable empirical evidence. Here we analyze results of the yearlong replicated mesocosm experiment with multi-species plankton community that allowed revealing signs of chaos at different trophic levels in strictly controlled abiotic environment. In mesocosms without external stressors, we observed the “paradox of chaos” when biotic interactions (internal drivers) were acting as generators of internal abiotic triggers of complex plankton dynamics. Chaos was registered as episodes that vanished unpredictably or were substituted by complex behaviour of other candidates when longer time series were considered. Remarkably, episodes of chaos were detected even in the most abiotically stable conditions. We developed the Integral Chaos Indicator to validate the results of the Lyapunov exponent analysis. These findings are essential for modelling and forecasting behaviour of a variety of natural and other global systems.

Related collections

Most cited references 42

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Early warning signals of extinction in deteriorating environments.

John M. Drake, Blaine Griffen (2010)

During the decline to extinction, animal populations may present dynamical phenomena not exhibited by robust populations. Some of these phenomena, such as the scaling of demographic variance, are related to small size whereas others result from density-dependent nonlinearities. Although understanding the causes of population extinction has been a central problem in theoretical biology for decades, the ability to anticipate extinction has remained elusive. Here we argue that the causes of a population's decline are central to the predictability of its extinction. Specifically, environmental degradation may cause a tipping point in population dynamics, corresponding to a bifurcation in the underlying population growth equations, beyond which decline to extinction is almost certain. In such cases, imminent extinction will be signalled by critical slowing down (CSD). We conducted an experiment with replicate laboratory populations of Daphnia magna to test this hypothesis. We show that populations crossing a transcritical bifurcation, experimentally induced by the controlled decline in environmental conditions, show statistical signatures of CSD after the onset of environmental deterioration and before the critical transition. Populations in constant environments did not have these patterns. Four statistical indicators all showed evidence of the approaching bifurcation as early as 110 days (∼8 generations) before the transition occurred. Two composite indices improved predictability, and comparative analysis showed that early warning signals based solely on observations in deteriorating environments without reference populations for standardization were hampered by the presence of transient dynamics before the onset of deterioration, pointing to the importance of reliable baseline data before environmental deterioration begins. The universality of bifurcations in models of population dynamics suggests that this phenomenon should be general.

0 comments Cited 225 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Complex dynamics and phase synchronization in spatially extended ecological systems.

B Blasius, A Huppert, L Stone (1999)

Population cycles that persist in time and are synchronized over space pervade ecological systems, but their underlying causes remain a long-standing enigma. Here we examine the synchronization of complex population oscillations in networks of model communities and in natural systems, where phenomena such as unusual '4- and 10-year cycle' of wildlife are often found. In the proposed spatial model, each local patch sustains a three-level trophic system composed of interacting predators, consumers and vegetation. Populations oscillate regularly and periodically in phase, but with irregular and chaotic peaks together in abundance-twin realistic features that are not found in standard ecological models. In a spatial lattice of patches, only small amounts of local migration are required to induce broad-scale 'phase synchronization, with all populations in the lattice phase-locking to the same collective rhythm. Peak population abundances, however, remain chaotic and largely uncorrelated. Although synchronization is often perceived as being detrimental to spatially structured populations, phase synchronization leads to the emergence of complex chaotic travelling-wave structures which may be crucial for species persistence.

0 comments Cited 219 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Biological populations with nonoverlapping generations: stable points, stable cycles, and chaos.

R M May (1974)

Some of the simplest nonlinear difference equations describing the growth of biological populations with nonoverlapping generations can exhibit a remarkable spectrum of dynamical behavior, from stable equilibrium points, to stable cyclic oscillations between 2 population points, to stable cycles with 4, 8, 16, . . . points, through to a chaotic regime in which (depending on the initial population value) cycles of any period, or even totally aperiodic but boundedpopulation fluctuations, can occur. This rich dynamical structure is overlooked in conventional linearized analyses; its existence in such fully deterministic nonlinear difference equations is a fact of considerable mathematical and ecological interest.

0 comments Cited 195 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Irena V. Telesh:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4167-3821

Irena.Telesh@zin.ru

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 30 December 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 30 December 2019

Publication date Collection: 2019

Volume: 9

Electronic Location Identifier: 20351

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2314 7601, GRID grid.439287.3, Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, ; St. Petersburg, 199034 Russia

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0000 9629 3848, GRID grid.418947.7, Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, ; St. Petersburg, 194064 Russia

[3 ]ISNI 0000000121858338, GRID grid.10493.3f, University of Rostock, Institute of Biosciences, ; Rostock, 18059 Germany

[4 ]GRID grid.469914.7, CSIRO Land and Water, Black Mountain, ; Canberra, ACT 2601 Australia

[5 ]ISNI 0000000121858338, GRID grid.10493.3f, University of Rostock, Biosciences, Subject Didactics Biology, ; Rostock, 18051 Germany

Author information

Irena V. Telesh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4167-3821

Klaus D. Joehnk http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5972-4201

Article

Publisher ID: 56851

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-56851-8

PMC ID: 6937249

PubMed ID: 31889119

SO-VID: 573d0736-c228-40da-aae7-f41f808dfebc

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 11 April 2019

Date accepted : 16 December 2019

Funding

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100006769, Russian Science Foundation (RSF);

Award ID: 19-14-00109

Award Recipient : Irena V. Telesh Sergei O. Skarlato

Funded by: This research was carried out in the framework of “Ulrich Schiewer Laboratory for Experimental Aquatic Ecology (USELab)” funded by the International Bureau of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF project 01DJ12107). Data analyses were supported in parts by the International Exchange Program of the University of Rostock (I.T., H.S.)and the Russian Science Foundation (project 19-14-00109, S.S. and I.T.; analyses of microplankton datasets).

Funded by: International Exchange Program of the University of Rostock (I.T., H.S.). International Bureau of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF project 01DJ12107).