Thresholds and tipping points are tempting but not necessarily suitable concepts to address anthropogenic biodiversity change—an intervention

作者：Helmut Hillebrand, Lucie Kuczynski, Charlotte Kunze, Marina C. Rillo, Jan‐Claas Dajka · 发表于：Marine Biodiversity · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1007/s12526-023-01342-3 · 被引用次数：33 · 研究领域：Ecosystem dynamics and resilience、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

Abstract Thresholds and tipping points are frequently used concepts to address the risks of global change pressures and their mitigation. It is tempting to also consider them to understand biodiversity change and design measures to ensure biotic integrity. Here, we argue that thresholds and tipping points do not work well in the context of biodiversity change for conceptual, ethical, and empirical reasons. Defining a threshold for biodiversity change (a maximum tolerable degree of turnover or loss) neglects that ecosystem multifunctionality often relies on the complete entangled web of species interactions and invokes the ethical issue of declaring some biodiversity dispensable. Alternatively defining a threshold for pressures on biodiversity might seem more straightforward as it addresses the causes of biodiversity change. However, most biodiversity change appears to be gradual and accumulating over time rather than reflecting a disproportionate change when transgressing a pressure threshold. Moreover, biodiversity change is not in synchrony with environmental change, but massively delayed through inertia inflicted by population dynamics and demography. In consequence, formulating environmental management targets as preventing the transgression of thresholds is less useful in the context of biodiversity change, as such thresholds neither capture how biodiversity responds to anthropogenic pressures nor how it links to ecosystem functioning. Instead, addressing biodiversity ch...