Reflecting on the symmetry of ecosystem tipping points: The influence of trait dissimilarity and environmental driver dynamics in a simple ecosystem model.

Abstract

Our understanding of the similarity in trajectories of ecosystem changes during different directions of environmental change is limited. For example, do the dominant organisms exhibit the same responses to different directions of environmental change, that is, do they exhibit symmetric responses? Here, we explore whether such response symmetry is determined and controlled by the symmetry in the features of the underlying biological system (i.e., system symmetry), such as in the network and strength of biotic and abiotic processes, and in symmetry of the environmental change (i.e., environmental symmetry). For this exploration, we developed and used a simple mathematical model of a microbial ecosystem driven by mutual inhibition in which we could vary the amount of system and environmental symmetry. Our results show that perfect system and environmental symmetry indeed produce perfect response symmetry. Moreover, introducing asymmetry in biological systems or in the environment proportionally increases response asymmetry. These findings suggest using symmetries in ecosystem structure and interaction strength to better understand and predict similarities in degradation and restoration phases of environmental change.