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Ecosystem Entanglement and the Propagation of Nutrient-Driven Instability
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  • Kevin McCann,
  • Andrew MacDougall,
  • Carling Bieg,
  • Kevin Cazelles,
  • Melania Cristescu,
  • Gabriel Gellner,
  • John Fryxell,
  • Gregor Fussmann,
  • Andrew Gonzalez
Kevin McCann
University of Guelph

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Andrew MacDougall
Guelph
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Carling Bieg
University of Guelph
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Kevin Cazelles
University of Guelph
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Melania Cristescu
McGill University Faculty of Science
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Gabriel Gellner
University of Guelph College of Biological Science
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John Fryxell
University of Guelph
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Gregor Fussmann
McGill University
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Andrew Gonzalez
McGill University
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Abstract

Almost 50 years ago, Michael Rosenzweig pointed out that nutrient addition can destabilize food webs, leading to loss of species and reduced ecosystem function through the paradox of enrichment. Around the same time, David Tilman demonstrated that increased nutrient loading would also be expected to cause competitive exclusion leading to deleterious changes in food web diversity. While both concepts have greatly illuminated general diversity-stability theory, we currently lack a coherent framework to predict how nutrients influence food web stability across a landscape. This is a vitally important gap in our understanding, given mounting evidence of serious ecological disruption arising from anthropogenic displacement of resources and organisms. Here, we combine contemporary theory on food webs and meta-ecosystems to show that nutrient additions are indeed expected to drive loss in stability and function in human-impacted regions. However, this loss in stability occurs not just from wild oscillations in population abundance, but more frequently from the complete loss of an equilibrium due to edible plant species being competitively excluded. In highly modified landscapes, spatial nutrient transport theory suggests that such instabilities can be amplified over vast distances from the sites of nutrient addition. Consistent with this theoretical synthesis, the empirical frequency of these distant propagating ecosystem imbalances appears to be growing. This synthesis of theory and empirical data suggests that human modification of the Earth’s ecological connectivity is “entangling” once distantly separated ecosystems, causing rapid, expansive, and costly nutrient-driven instabilities over vast areas of the planet. The corollary to this spatial nutrient theory, though – akin to weak interaction theory from food web networks – is that slow spatial nutrient pathways can be potent stabilizers by moderating flows across a landscape
22 Apr 2020Submitted to Ecology Letters
24 Apr 2020Submission Checks Completed
24 Apr 2020Assigned to Editor
07 May 2020Reviewer(s) Assigned
08 Jun 2020Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
17 Jun 2020Editorial Decision: Revise Major
19 Aug 20201st Revision Received
20 Aug 2020Assigned to Editor
20 Aug 2020Submission Checks Completed
25 Aug 2020Reviewer(s) Assigned
18 Sep 2020Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
21 Sep 2020Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
01 Oct 20202nd Revision Received
01 Oct 2020Submission Checks Completed
01 Oct 2020Assigned to Editor
08 Oct 2020Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
08 Oct 2020Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
12 Oct 20203rd Revision Received
12 Oct 2020Submission Checks Completed
12 Oct 2020Assigned to Editor
13 Oct 2020Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
13 Oct 2020Editorial Decision: Accept