Clark, Adam T. T.

Dominguez-Garcia, Virginia

Hodapp, Dorothee

Radchuk, Viktoriia

Zelnik, Yuval

English

Epsilon Open Archive

TYPE EditorialPUBLISHED 16 May 2023DOI 10.3389/fevo.2023.1201269OPEN ACCESSEDITED AND REVIEWED BYPedro Daleo,Institute of Marine and Coastal Research(IIMyC), Argentina*CORRESPONDENCEYuval R. Zelnikzelnik@post.bgu.ac.ilRECEIVED 06 April 2023ACCEPTED 02 May 2023PUBLISHED 16 May 2023CITATIONZelnik YR, Clark AT, Radchuk V, Hodapp D andDominguez-Garcia V (2023) Editorial: Stabilityacross spatial and temporal scales.Front. Ecol. Evol. 11:1201269.doi: 10.3389/fevo.2023.1201269COPYRIGHT© 2023 Zelnik, Clark, Radchuk, Hodapp andDominguez-Garcia. This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).The use, distribution or reproduction in otherforums is permitted, provided the originalauthor(s) and the copyright owner(s) arecredited and that the original publication in thisjournal is cited, in accordance with acceptedacademic practice. No use, distribution orreproduction is permitted which does notcomply with these terms.Editorial: Stability across spatialand temporal scalesYuval R. Zelnik1*, Adam T. Clark2, Viktoriia Radchuk3,Dorothee Hodapp4 and Virginia Dominguez-Garcia51Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden,2Institute of Biology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria, 3Department of Ecological Dynamics, LeibnizInstitute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (LG), Berlin, Germany, 4Alfred Wegener Institute HelmholtzCentre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Bremerhaven, Germany, 5Doñana Biological Station,Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Seville, SpainKEYWORDSstability, perturbation, scale, spatial, temporalEditorial on the Research TopicStability across spatial and temporal scalesMotivationExplicitly considering spatial and temporal scale is crucial when studying stability ofecological systems (Levin, 1992; Chase et al., 2018). Because both scale and stability canbe defined in different ways (Pimm, 1984; Grimm and Wissel, 1997; Donohue et al.,2016), it is important to explicitly consider the scales at which major ecosystem processes,perturbations, and observations take place—and how each of these scales interact with thestability metric used. For example, the relevant scales for studying the stability of forests arevery different from those for grasslands—and different scales must be considered for short-term pulse perturbations (e.g., fires, storms) vs. long-term press perturbations (e.g., nutrientloading, desertification).Understanding how stability is affected by scale is basic ecological research, but also hasimportant applied implications. For instance, in a successional grassland study (Clark et al.,2019), both invasion-based metrics and asymptotic stability estimates varied so stronglyacross spatial and temporal scales that no single set of scales existed that fully describedcommunity dynamics. In light of global change, and the multiple challenges it poses toecosystems, understanding the scaling of ecological stability is instrumental for ecology.Some relevant questions to address regarding stability and scale are:(a) At what scales are particular systems especially vulnerable to specific kindsof perturbations?(b) At what scales are management interventions likely to be most effective?(c) What information about a system is necessary in order to scale up small spatial andtemporal scale findings to larger scales that are relevant for conservation management?(d) Where is more research needed in order to measure stability at relevant scales,understand its ramification on ecosystems, and derive cross-system generalizations (e.g.,Clark et al., 2021)?State of stabilityGiven the numerous recent studies on Ecological stability, it would be useful to reviewthis body of work via the lens of scale. One approach is to map the spatial and temporalscales at which different kinds of ecosystems are typically observed, and compare it with theFrontiers in Ecology andEvolution 01 frontiersin.orgZelnik et al. 10.3389/fevo.2023.1201269FIGURE 1A spatial-temporal map of ecological stability. (A) Scales of observation of di erent ecosystem types: forests in green, grasslands in orange, andmicrobes in purple. (B) Scales at which di erent metrics of ecological stability have been measured: persistence in green, resilience in blue andvariability in red. The di erent studies included in the map are indicated in the legend. The three papers included in this Research Topic where scale isconsidered in an explicit fashion (11, 12, and 13) are highlighted in light red. Besides the studies referred to in the main text, the figure also refers tothe studies of Fried-Petersen et al. (2020), Hu aker (1958), Pedrotti et al. (2014), Radchuk et al. (2014), Seabloom et al. (2003), Ushio et al. (2018),Wang and Michel (2014), and Zhang et al. (2018).scales used to study stability. In Figure 1, we showcase such anapproach for a limited number of ecosystems and studies, todemonstrate the idea and its utility.Observations of different ecosystem types, such as forests andgrasslands, take place over different regions of our spatial-temporalmap, and some regions of this map are not covered at all. Further,many studies focus on small and specific subsets of thismap, such asshorter spatial and temporal scales, likely due to logistic constraintsassociated with observing ecological systems across spatial scales,and the often short-term nature of scientific projects. We also notetwo demarcation lines, i.e., limits to the scales at which ecologicalstability can reasonably be studied. The “locality boundary” showscombinations of very large spatial/very short temporal scales, acrosswhich the flow of information and materials is too slow to be ofmuch influence (e.g., second-by-second variation at continentalscales). The “homogeneity boundary” shows combinations of verysmall spatial/very long temporal scales, across which processeshomogenize completely and thus have no spatial or temporalstructure (e.g., century-by-century variation within 1 cm2).Stability and scales in this ResearchTopicEmpirical studies differ widely in their temporal and spatialextent and results with respect to stability scaling. For instance,in this Topic spatial scales vary from meters (Fica-Rojas et al.) tohundreds of kilometers (Hodapp et al.) and temporal scales reachfrom months (Fica-Rojas et al.) to years (Ebel et al.; Hodapp et al.).While some studies did not detect any impact of scale on ecologicalstability (e.g., Ebel et al.) others demonstrate that scale matters. Forexample, Hodapp et al. showed that temporal biomass invariabilityincreased with spatial scale. Theoretical studies on stability acrossscale give insight on which empirical work is most relevant. Studiessuch as Jarillo et al. clarify when partial sampling is sufficient toinfer large-scale stability, and when new methods of extrapolationare necessary. Quévreux and Loreau study how perturbationspropagate across space given the community structure, necessaryfor understanding how stability at small scales determines thebehavior of the system at larger scales.Ways forwardThe spatial-temporal maps in Figure 1 show one way toidentify gaps in our current scale-wise understanding of ecologicalstability. We propose that there are at least three categories ofknowledge gaps:1) straight-forward methodology: important gaps inspatiotemporal scales at which studies on stability areconducted, which can be filled by either: (i) synthesis; dataare collected at these spatiotemporal scales, but initiative isneeded to analyze those data, e.g., the Wang et al. (2017)methodology could probably be applied to global grasslanddata; or by (ii) data acquisition; appropriate data has notbeen collected yet, e.g., studies of invariability of soil microbebiomass at the global scale.2) requiring new theory: important gaps that can be filled bytheory (i.e., appropriate data already exist, but the theoryneeded to analyze them is not yet developed—e.g., studiesFrontiers in Ecology andEvolution 02 frontiersin.orgZelnik et al. 10.3389/fevo.2023.1201269of persistence or resilience for systems with non-stationarydynamics; Clark et al., 2022). This is most evident whencurrent observations are not possible at certain scales, andtheory is needed for extrapolation.3) limited importance: gaps in observed spatiotemporal scalesthat are of limited biological importance (e.g., very smallspatiotemporal scales for tree communities).We hope that our proposed approach to mappingspatiotemporal scales of the studies conducted until now willbe picked up and used to obtain a general understanding of thegaps pertinent to the field investigating stability across scales. Weinvite further research instigated by unraveling the gaps: datacollection, application of available methods to already collecteddata, and further development of theory and tools, to advancetoward a more coherent understanding of ecological stability.Author contributionsAll authors contributed to the conception and writing of thepaper.AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the participants of the Filling in gaps inglobal understanding of ecological stability and coexistence (FIGS)workshop for helpful discussions.Conflict of interestThe authors declare that the research was conducted in theabsence of any commercial or financial relationships that could beconstrued as a potential conflict of interest.Publisher’s noteAll claims expressed in this article are solely those of theauthors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliatedorganizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and thereviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, orclaim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed orendorsed by the publisher.ReferencesChase, J. M., McGill, B. J., McGlinn, D. J., May, F., Blowes, S. A., Xiao, X., et al.(2018). Embracing scale-dependence to achieve a deeper understanding of biodiversityand its change across communities. Ecol. Lett. 21, 1737–1751. doi: 10.1111/ele.13151Clark, A., Hillebrand, H., and Harpole, W. S. (2019). Scale both confounds andinforms characterization of species coexistence in empirical systems. Am. Nat. 194,794–806. doi: 10.1086/705826Clark, A. T., Arnoldi, J. F., Zelnik, Y. R., Barabas, G., Hodapp, D., Karakoç, C., et al.(2021). General statistical scaling laws for stability in ecological systems. Ecol. Lett. 24,1474–1486. doi: 10.1111/ele.13760Clark, A. T., Mühlbauer, L. K., Hillebrand, H., and Karakoç, C. (2022).Measuring stability in ecological systems without static equilibria. Ecosphere 13, e4328.doi: 10.1002/ecs2.4328Donohue, I., Hillebrand, H., Montoya, J. M., Petchey, O. L., Pimm, S. L., Fowler,M. S., et al. (2016). Navigating the complexity of ecological stability. Ecol. Lett. 19,1172–1185. doi: 10.1111/ele.12648Fried-Petersen, H. B., Araya-Ajoy, Y. G., Futter, M. N., and Angeler, D. G. (2020).Drivers of long-term invertebrate community stability in changing Swedish lakes.Glob.Chang. Biol. 26, 1259–1270. doi: 10.1111/gcb.14952Grimm, V., and Wissel, C. (1997). Babel, or the ecological stability discussions: aninventory and analysis of terminology and a guide for avoiding confusion. Oecologia109, 323–334. doi: 10.1007/s004420050090Huffaker, C. (1958). Experimental studies on predation: dispersion factors andpredator-prey oscillations. Hilgardia 27, 343–383. doi: 10.3733/hilg.v27n14p343Levin, S. A. (1992). The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: the Robert H.MacArthur Award lecture. 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Editorial: Stability across spatial and temporal scales

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Editorial: Stability across spatial and temporal scales

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