Investigating Tipping and Its Predictability in Noisy Environments: Evaluating the Impact of Temporal and Species Response Correlation

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

American Naturalist

Abstract

Understanding and identifying factors influencing the likelihood of sudden transitions in ecological systems is a significant area of scientific research. Environmental fluctuations are particularly important, as they can trigger these transitions before reaching the system’s condition to a deterministic tipping point. While there has been much focus on noise-induced tipping due to uncorrelated environmental noise, the impact of correlated noise on multispecies systems has been relatively overlooked. Specifically, studies have neglected the impact of correlations between species responses to environmental changes and a system’s susceptibility to tipping. This study examines various two-species ecological models representing different interaction types in noisy environments. We reaffirm that elevated positive temporal autocorrelations in environmental fluctuations aggravate the chance of tipping. Conversely, our key findings suggest that elevated positive correlations in species responses generally delay the onset of tipping, except when the system dynamics is solely driven by positive interspecific interactions. The correlation of species responses is also critical in determining the reliability of early warning signals for predicting sudden ecological changes. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the similarity between species’ responses to environmental variability, which significantly influences the likelihood and detectability of dramatic ecological transitions.

First Page

E63

Last Page

E77

DOI

10.1086/737131

Publication Date

10-1-2025

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