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‘Ecosystem canaries’ provide early warning signs of catastrophic changes to ecosystems
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/08/ecosystem-canaries-study.page[font face=Serif][font size=5]‘Ecosystem canaries’ provide early warning signs of catastrophic changes to ecosystems[/font]
19 August 2016
[font size=4]New research, led by the University of Southampton, demonstrates that ‘ecosystem canaries’ can provide early warning signals of large, potentially catastrophic, changes or tipping points in ecosystems.[/font]
[font size=3]…
The research, published (in press) in the journal Ecology, uses ecosystem canaries to show early warning signals of tipping points in three lake ecosystems in China. There is potential to apply this new technique to many other habitats, to increase our understanding of how they respond to human impacts such as overfishing, deforestation and climate change.
The study used data collected from lakes that showed changes in the abundance of species from algae (diatom) and aquatic midges (chironomid) communities as they compete for resources under environmental pressures. From this data it was possible to identify three types of organism: slowly-replicating but strongly competitive ‘keystone’ species; weakly-competitive but fast-replicating ‘weedy species’; and slowly-replicating and weakly-competitive ‘canary’ species.
As environmental degradation impacts on the ecosystem, keystones initially prevail through competitive dominance over others, resulting in the early demise of canary species. With continuing degradation affecting all species, this leads to the eventual collapse of the keystone species as they are replaced by the weedy species. The loss of keystones puts the ecosystem into a critical transition – the point at which a system tips into an alternate state which can be very hard to recover from.
The vulnerability of canary species suggests a role for this group as a sensitive indicator of environmental forcing, yet it is often assumed their presence or absence has no useful ecological information.
…[/font][/font]
19 August 2016
[font size=4]New research, led by the University of Southampton, demonstrates that ‘ecosystem canaries’ can provide early warning signals of large, potentially catastrophic, changes or tipping points in ecosystems.[/font]
[font size=3]…
The research, published (in press) in the journal Ecology, uses ecosystem canaries to show early warning signals of tipping points in three lake ecosystems in China. There is potential to apply this new technique to many other habitats, to increase our understanding of how they respond to human impacts such as overfishing, deforestation and climate change.
The study used data collected from lakes that showed changes in the abundance of species from algae (diatom) and aquatic midges (chironomid) communities as they compete for resources under environmental pressures. From this data it was possible to identify three types of organism: slowly-replicating but strongly competitive ‘keystone’ species; weakly-competitive but fast-replicating ‘weedy species’; and slowly-replicating and weakly-competitive ‘canary’ species.
As environmental degradation impacts on the ecosystem, keystones initially prevail through competitive dominance over others, resulting in the early demise of canary species. With continuing degradation affecting all species, this leads to the eventual collapse of the keystone species as they are replaced by the weedy species. The loss of keystones puts the ecosystem into a critical transition – the point at which a system tips into an alternate state which can be very hard to recover from.
The vulnerability of canary species suggests a role for this group as a sensitive indicator of environmental forcing, yet it is often assumed their presence or absence has no useful ecological information.
…[/font][/font]