ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Kelp-forest dynamics controlled by substrate complexity.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Conspecific mortality and resource availability drive a trait-mediated cascade by modifying sea urchin grazing behavior.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Deciphering spatial scales of connectivity in a subsidy-dependent coastal ecosystem.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Dynamic and context-dependent keystone species effects in kelp forests.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Drivers of spatiotemporal variability in a marine foundation species.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2025Article
- Multiple resiliency metrics reveal complementary drivers of ecosystem persistence: An application to kelp forest systems.Ecology · 2024Article
- Seaweed functional strategies, functional groups, and taxon dynamics through a 213-year historical series of Rio De Janeiro Bay.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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- Patterns and drivers of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in the kelp forests of southern Patagonia.PloS one · 2023Article
- Alternations in the foraging behaviour of a primary consumer drive patch transition dynamics in a temperate rocky reef ecosystem.Ecology letters · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The factors that determine why ecosystems exhibit abrupt shifts in state are of paramount importance for management, conservation, and restoration efforts. Kelp forests are emblematic of such abruptly shifting ecosystems, transitioning from kelp-dominated to urchin-dominated states around the world with increasing frequency, yet the underlying processes and mechanisms that control their dynamics remain unclear. Here, we analyze four decades of data from biannual monitoring around San Nicolas Island, CA, to show that substrate complexity controls both the number of possible (alternative) states and the velocity with which shifts between states occur. The superposition of community dynamics with reconstructions of system stability landscapes reveals that shifts between alternative states at low-complexity sites reflect abrupt, high-velocity events initiated by pulse perturbations that rapidly propel species across dynamically unstable state-space. In contrast, high-complexity sites exhibit a single state of resilient kelp-urchin coexistence. Our analyses suggest that substrate complexity influences both top-down and bottom-up regulatory processes in kelp forests, highlight its influence on kelp-forest stability at both large (island-wide) and small (<10 m) spatial scales, and could be valuable for holistic kelp-forest management.
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