Navigation between initial and desired community states using shortcuts
Abstract
Ecological management problems often involve navigating from an initial to a desired community state. We ask whether navigation without brute‐force additions and deletions of species is possible via: adding/deleting a small number of individuals of a species, changing the environment, and waiting. Navigation can yield direct paths (single sequence of actions) or shortcut paths (multiple sequences of actions with lower cost than a direct path). We ask (1) when is non‐brute‐force navigation possible?; (2) do shortcuts exist and what are their properties?; and (3) what heuristics predict shortcut existence? Using a state diagram framework applied to several empirical datasets, we show that (1) non‐brute‐force navigation is only possible between some state pairs, (2) shortcuts exist between many state pairs; and (3) changes in abundance and richness are the strongest predictors of shortcut existence, independent of dataset and algorithm choices. State diagrams thus unveil hidden strategies for manipulating species coexistence and efficiently navigating between states.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 09, 2023
- Source ID
- 10.1111/ele.14171
Entities
People
- Benjamin Blonder
- Claire J. Tomlin
- Michael H. Lim
- Zachary Sunberg
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka
- Semiconductor Research Corporation
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of Colorado Boulder