Social copying drives a tipping point for nonlinear population collapse.

ABSTRACT: Sudden changes in populations are ubiquitous in ecological systems, especially under perturbations. The agents of global change may increase the frequency and severity of anthropogenic perturbations, but complex populations' responses hamper our understanding of their dynamics and resilience. Furthermore, the long-term environmental and demographic data required to study those sudden changes are rare. Fitting dynamical models with an artificial intelligence algorithm to population fluctuations over 40 y in a social bird reveals that feedback in dispersal after a cumulative perturbation drives a population collapse. The collapse is well described by a nonlinear function mimicking social copying, whereby dispersal made by a few individuals induces others to leave the patch in a behavioral ca

SUBMITTER: Oro D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10089190 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature