![]() | Review waiting, please be patient.
This may take 2 months or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 2,424 pending submissions waiting for review.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Reviewer tools
|
Submission declined on 26 February 2024 by Star Mississippi (talk). This submission reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. Submissions should summarise information in secondary, reliable sources and not contain opinions or original research. Please write about the topic from a neutral point of view in an encyclopedic manner.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
This draft has been resubmitted and is currently awaiting re-review. | ![]() |
Ecological Structural Instability refers to the sensitivity of ecological communities to direct or indirect environmental pressures which are so high that they result in species extinctions [1]. At this point, invasion of a single new species can force the extinction of another. Species of a low abundance with small biomass are the most likely to go extinct at the point of Ecological Structural Instability[2]. If one species replaces the role of another species upon extinction, then this will have little effect on ecosystem function[1].
This links to the mathematical concept of structural instability, defined in dynamical systems theory as a situation where a small change in a system can change its behaviour qualitatively[3].
Effects of invaders [4]
Invaders can impact communities directly through:
• Direct interspecific competition between species (e.g. for shelter)
Or indirectly through:
• Interspecific competition of predators for shared prey.
• Introduction of a new predator leading to trophic cascades
Near the instability limit, indirect interactions involving multiple species are important, accounting for ~50% of community alterations [5][6]. The full effects of this would be seen over a long period of time, so short-term responses are a poor measure of the full impact[7].
Mathematical Models
Mathematical analysis can provide more in depth understanding of ecological structural instability, especially because the effects of indirect interactions can be counter-intuitive, and can be used to make quantitative predictions.
Lotka-Volterra competition models with random interactions aid the study of instability in species-rich communities and are supported by empirical data [8]. Simulation predictions are often robust to variations in model structure, except in some cases [9][10].
Mathematical analysis shows that around half of invasion attempts succeed, matching observations [11].