A little human meddling may prevent the mess of extinctions that can ripple through disturbed ecosystems.
A new analysis of how perturbations propagate through a network of organisms reveals that when an ecosystem is already off-kilter, proactively removing particular species can halt the cascade of destruction that may follow. The approach, described online January 25 in Nature Communications, could help well-defined areas such as islands deal with the effects of invasive species.
“At the end of the day, methods based on inflicting locally controlled damage — despite being damaging — can have a positive effect on the entire network,” says study coauthor Adilson Motter of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.