Hysteresis and critical transitions in a coffee agroecosystem.

Abstract

Seeking to employ ecological principles in agricultural management, a classical ecological debate provides a useful framing. Whether ecosystems are controlled from above (predators are the limiting force over herbivores) or from below (overutilization of plant resources is the limiting force over herbivores) is a debate that has motivated much research. The dichotomous nature of the debate (above or below) has been criticized as too limiting, especially in light of contemporary appreciation of ecological complexity-control is more likely from a panoply of direct and indirect interactions. In the context of the agroecosystem, regulation is assumed to be from above and pests are controlled, a way of using ecological insights in service of an essential ecosystem service-pest control. However, this obvious resolution of the old debate does not negate the deeper appreciation of complexity-the natural enemies themselves constitute a complex system. Here we use some key concepts from complexity science to interrogate the natural functioning of pest regulation through spatially explicit dynamics of a predator and a disease operating simultaneously but distributed in space. Using the green coffee scale insect as a focal species, we argue that certain key ideas of complexity science shed light on how that system operates. In particular, a hysteretic pattern associated with distance to a keystone ant is evident.