Black-swan events in animal populations

被引:90
作者
Anderson, Sean C. [1 ,2 ]
Branch, Trevor A. [2 ]
Cooper, Andrew B. [3 ]
Dulvy, Nicholas K. [1 ]
机构
[1] Simon Fraser Univ, Dept Biol Sci, Earth Ocean Res Grp, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada
[2] Univ Washington, Sch Aquat & Fishery Sci, Seattle, WA 98195 USA
[3] Simon Fraser Univ, Sch Resource & Environm Management, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada
基金
加拿大自然科学与工程研究理事会;
关键词
mass mortality; ecological surprises; population dynamics; die-offs; ecological risk; CATASTROPHIC EVENTS; DENSITY-DEPENDENCE; TIME-SERIES; POWER LAWS; DIE-OFFS; DYNAMICS; REGRESSION; EXTREMES; VARIABILITY; EVOLUTION;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.1611525114
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Black swans are improbable events that nonetheless occur-often with profound consequences. Such events drive important transitions in social systems (e.g., banking collapses) and physical systems (e.g., earthquakes), and yet it remains unclear the extent to which ecological population numbers buffer or suffer from such extremes. Here, we estimate the prevalence and direction of black-swan events (heavy-tailed process noise) in 609 animal populations after accounting for population dynamics (productivity, density dependence, and typical stochasticity). We find strong evidence for black-swan events in similar to 4% of populations. These events occur most frequently for birds (7%), mammals (5%), and insects (3%) and are not explained by any life-history covariates but tend to be driven by external perturbations such as climate, severe winters, predators, parasites, or the combined effect of multiple factors. Black-swan events manifest primarily as population die-offs and crashes (86%) rather than unexpected increases, and ignoring heavy-tailed process noise leads to an underestimate in the magnitude of population crashes. We suggest modelers consider heavy-tailed, downward-skewed probability distributions, such as the skewed Student t used here, when making forecasts of population abundance. Our results demonstrate the importance of both modeling heavy-tailed downward events in populations, and developing conservation strategies that are robust to ecological surprises.
引用
收藏
页码:3252 / 3257
页数:6
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