Chaos is Not Rare in Natural Ecosystems

Lenfest grantees have found that chaos—events within a system that appear to be random—may be more common in natural systems than previously thought. In this study, the research team applied a variety of chaos detection methods to a global database of 172 population time series and found that more than 30% of the populations showed signs of chaotic dynamics. It’s possible that chaos in single species models may currently be mis-characterized as “noise,” data seen as inaccurate or error bound, which can mistakenly represent a system as stable. These results reflect methodological and data limitations in ecological forecasting. While robust forecasting is possible, managers should be wary of assuming the inherent stability of ecosystems in setting long-term conservation and management objectives.

Read the full paper here.

Reference

Rogers, T.L., Johnson, B.J., and Munch, S.B. (2022) Chaos is not rare in natural ecosystems. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01787-y