Department of Integrative Biology

The study of ecosystems in action, by measuring ecosystem recovery from disturbance, resistance to alterations, and the reversibility of ecosystem changes, highlights features of natural communities that contribute to resilience. Examples front marine intertidal and subtidal communities document the importance of species redundancy and complementarity in resistance and recovery, and they also show why recovery potential and resistance call differ from place to place within the same ecosystem. Whether a change is considered reversible may depend oil the timescale of interest, and oil whether fandamental new ecological processes have taken hold after a disturbance. By focusing oil recovery, resistance, and reversibility as key components of resilience, marine ecologists have provided a much-needed empirical database about the response of the living world to human-mediated change.