The idea that alternative stable states may exist in communities has been a recurring theme in ecology since the late 1960s, and is now experiencing a resurgence of interest. Since the first papers on the subject appeared, two perspectives have developed to describe how communities shift from one stable state to another. One assumes a constant environment with shifts in variables such as population density, and the other anticipates changes to underlying parameters or environmental "drivers". We review the theory behind alternative stable states and examine to what extent these perspectives are the same, and in what ways they differ. We discuss the concepts of resilience and hysteresis, and the role of stochasticity within the two formulations. In spite of differences in the two perspectives, the same type of experimental evidence is required to demonstrate the existence of alternative stable states.
The phytoplankton community of eutrophic shallow lakes is often dominated by filamentous cyanobacteria of the family Oscillatoriaceae. In this paper we follow two independent ap...
To see whether real ecosystems (as opposed to model ones) are stable, i.e., whether they exhibit resistance to short-term perturbations or adjustment following them, stable equi...
Human impacts, including global change, may alter the composition of soil faunal communities, but consequences for ecosystem functioning are poorly understood. We constructed mo...
Multiple stable states occur when more than one type of community can stably persist in a single environmental regime. Simple theoretical analyses predict multiple stable states...
The existence of multiple climate‐vegetation equilibria in Tropical South America is investigated under present‐day climate conditions with the use of an atmospheric general cir...
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