Axel Rossberg

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  Why structural instability is inherent to ecological communities and how management can deal with it
  Axel Rossberg
  Structural instability denotes situations where small changes in parameters (or external pressures) can fundamentally change the state of a system, in ecological communities typically through extirpations. I will argue based on models and data that structural instability increases with species richness and that natural communities tend to be packed to the point where invasion of any new species leads to extirpation of one other on average. As a result, ecological communities are inherently structurally unstable; detailed predictions of changes in ecosystem state in response to anthropogenic pressures are often impossible. Facing this challenge, managers have two options: to manage at the level of higher emergent properties, e.g. community size spectra, or to engineer desired ecosystem states and to stabilize them through adaptive management. I will discuss both options for the case of fisheries management.