Scientific background

Concepts & methods

A compact synthesis of the literature assembled for the workshop. These definitions and methodological groupings are working material for discussion, not agreed workshop outputs.

Working glossary

Terms we need to make explicit

Ecological stability and response diversity are used in overlapping but non-identical ways across the literature. The workshop will identify which definitions are useful for forecasting ecosystem-service stability.

Response diversity

Variation in responses to environmental change among species, populations or functional groups that contribute to similar ecosystem functions. The definition links diversity of environmental responses to functional compensation and ecological insurance.

Elmqvist et al. 2003; Mori et al. 2013; Ross et al. 2023.

Ecological stability

An umbrella concept rather than a single property. Relevant dimensions can include temporal constancy or variability, resistance to disturbance, rate or extent of recovery, and persistence. Which dimension is predicted must therefore be stated explicitly.

Grimm & Wissel 1997; Donohue et al. 2016.

Resistance, resilience & recovery

These terms describe different parts of a system's response to perturbation. Resistance concerns how strongly a system changes; resilience is often used for the rate of return; recovery concerns the extent to which a reference state is regained. Usage varies across subfields.

Grimm & Wissel 1997; Donohue et al. 2016.

Functional redundancy

Multiple species can contribute similarly to an ecosystem function. Redundancy alone does not imply response diversity: species with similar effects on function can still respond similarly or differently to environmental change.

Mori et al. 2013.

Response traits & effect traits

Response traits describe how organisms respond to environmental filters or drivers; effect traits describe how organisms influence ecosystem properties or services. A response-diversity analysis may need both, especially when grouping species by contribution to a shared function.

Mori et al. 2013; Ross et al. 2023.

Response capacity

A broader idea than response diversity to one specified driver: the range of ways a community could respond across multiple, possibly uncertain future conditions. Network-based approaches may be useful here even when they are not direct measures of realised response diversity.

Working synthesis informed by the response-diversity research agenda.

Stability across spatial scales

Local and regional stability need not be equivalent. Spatial asynchrony among local communities can stabilise aggregate ecosystem properties, motivating explicit treatment of α-, β- and γ-scale variability.

Wang & Loreau 2014.

Disturbance regime

Responses can depend on the type and structure of environmental change, including magnitude, duration, frequency and spatial pattern. Mechanisms inferred for continuous fluctuations may not transfer directly to pulse disturbances or interacting drivers.

Donohue et al. 2016 and subsequent response-diversity work.

Quantifying response diversity

Method families in the current synthesis

Current approaches span a continuum from indirect estimates of potential response diversity to direct estimates of species-specific responses and time-varying realised response profiles. The families below estimate different biological quantities and should be compared within clearly specified forecast contexts; they are not a ranking of methods.

Indirect · trait-based

Dispersion in functional trait space

Represent species by traits expected to mediate environmental responses, then quantify distances or dispersion in trait space as an estimate of potential response diversity.

Useful when
Direct performance–environment data are unavailable and trait data scale across sites or taxa.
Main caution
Trait choice and effect-group definition can dominate the result; trait-based estimates should be treated as hypotheses and tested against observed responses and stability outcomes.
Partly direct

Species × environment models

Estimate species-specific environmental coefficients or smooths and test whether responses differ among species.

Useful when
Multispecies abundance, performance or phenology data are observed along environmental gradients.
Main caution
Many implementations test whether heterogeneity exists rather than quantify its magnitude or stabilising consequence.
Direct

Performance–environment curves

Fit a performance function for each species and compare slopes, derivatives, pairwise distances, dissimilarity or directional divergence.

Useful when
Species-specific performance can be measured across a defined environmental gradient.
Main caution
Data intensive and conditional on the chosen performance variable, driver and environmental range.
Response-based

Environmental-response covariance & synchrony

Quantify covariation or synchrony among species-specific responses to environmental fluctuations; low synchrony can indicate differentiated responses.

Useful when
Longitudinal community data are available.
Main caution
Observed covariance can mix environmental responses with species interactions and other dynamic processes.
Stability-linked

Response imbalance

Summarise the directional balance of species responses. Opposing responses can cancel at community level, whereas similarly signed responses generate imbalance.

Useful when
The aim is to connect species environmental responses to aggregate temporal stability.
Main caution
It integrates response structure and stability-relevant directionality rather than measuring response diversity alone.
Multi-driver

Multivariate response surfaces

Estimate species-specific responses over two or more environmental drivers and compare response surfaces or their derivatives.

Useful when
Multifarious global change is central and sufficient data span combinations of drivers.
Main caution
Curse of dimensionality, interactions among drivers and limited coverage of environmental space.
Dynamic / realised

Empirical dynamic modelling

Use nonlinear time-series methods to estimate dynamic response profiles and how realised response diversity changes through time.

Useful when
Long, sufficiently resolved observational time series allow state-dependent dynamics to be reconstructed.
Main caution
Requires demanding data and careful interpretation of dynamic, interaction-mediated responses.
Adjacent · potential capacity

Network-based response capacity

Represent traits, functions or response options as networks and use structure, connectivity or redundancy to characterise potential response capacity.

Useful when
The question concerns multivariate capacity, vulnerable trait combinations or management options.
Main caution
Usually measures potential response capacity rather than realised response diversity to a specified driver.

Selected references

Starting points

This is a short set of references underpinning the workshop synthesis, not the full literature review.

Elmqvist T. et al. (2003). Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1:488–494. Article ↗

Mori AS, Furukawa T, Sasaki T. (2013). Response diversity determines the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change. Biological Reviews 88:349–364. DOI ↗

Grimm V, Wissel C. (1997). Babel, or the ecological stability discussions: an inventory and analysis of terminology and a guide for avoiding confusion. Oecologia 109:323–334. DOI ↗

Wang S, Loreau M. (2014). Ecosystem stability in space: α, β and γ variability. Ecology Letters 17:891–901. DOI ↗

Donohue I. et al. (2016). Navigating the complexity of ecological stability. Ecology Letters 19:1172–1185. DOI ↗

Ross SRP-J, Petchey OL, Sasaki T, Armitage DW. (2023). How to measure response diversity. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 14:1150–1167. DOI ↗

Polazzo F. et al. (2024). Measuring the Response Diversity of Ecological Communities Experiencing Multifarious Environmental Change. Global Change Biology 30:e17594. DOI ↗

Polazzo F, Hämmig T, Petchey OL, Pennekamp F. (2025). The imbalance of nature: the role of species environmental responses for community stability. Ecology Letters 28:e70224. DOI ↗

Ross SRP-J. et al. (2026). Expert-led priorities for a response diversity research agenda in ecology. Oikos: e11358. DOI ↗

Hsieh C-H. et al. (2026). Quantifying the effects of response diversity dynamics on ecosystem stability. Nature Communications 17:4090. DOI ↗