School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine

Measures of ecosystem stability and their relationships to ecological complexity

Project Questions and Objectives

I am interested in how we might devise more operational measures of ecosystem or community stability, and how these relate to notions of ecological complexity. While I think there remain some interesting theoretical questions regarding the relationship between local stability and ecological complexity (in the sense of the work of Robert May and Stuart Pimm), and particularly ecological permenance and complexity, these measures of stability are notoriously hard to apply to the real world. If these questions are to be advanced at all I believe that theoreticians will have to devise measures of stability that can be empiricially evaluated.

Project Description

These questions arise out of some of my earlier work, but remain of current interest to me.

References & manuscripts

Haydon, D.T. (2000 - pdf - Haydon 2000). Maximally stable model ecosystems can be highly connected. Ecology 81, 2631-2636.

Haydon, D.T. (1994). Pivotal assumptions determining the relationship between stability and complexity: An analytical synthesis of the stability complexity debate. American Naturalist. 144, 14-29.