title: Detecting reactivity.
abstract: By definition, ecological systems at a stable equilibrium eventually return to the equilibrium point following a small perturbation. In the short term, however, perturbations can grow. Equilibria that exhibit transient growth following perturbation are said to be reactive. In this report, we present a statistical method for detecting reactivity from multivariate time series. The test is simple and computationally tractable, and it can be applied to short time series. Its main limitation is that it is based on a model of population dynamics that is linear on a logarithmic scale. Our results suggest that the test is robust when the dynamics are nonlinear on the log scale but that it may incorrectly classify an equilibrium as reactive when the reactivity is close to zero.
authors.affiliation: Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543-1049, USA. mneubert@whoi.edu
authors.forename: Michael G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Neubert
authors.forename: Hal
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Caswell
authors.forename: Andrew R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Solow
mesh_terms: D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011157:Population Dynamics; D013997:Time Factors