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Abstract：
Our understanding of the similarity in trajectories of ecosystem changes during different directions of environmental change is limited. For example, do the dominant organisms exhibit the same responses to different directions of environmental change, that is, do they exhibit symmetric responses? Here, we explore whether such response symmetry is determined and controlled by the symmetry in the features of the underlying biological system (i.e., system symmetry), such as in the network and strength of biotic and abiotic processes, and in symmetry of the environmental change (i.e., environmental symmetry). For this exploration, we developed and used a simple mathematical model of a microbial ecosystem driven by mutual inhibition in which we could vary the amount of system and environmental symmetry. Our results show that perfect system and environmental symmetry indeed produce perfect response symmetry. Moreover, introducing asymmetry in biological systems or in the environment proportionally increases response asymmetry. These findings suggest using symmetries in ecosystem structure and interaction strength to better understand and predict similarities in degradation and restoration phases of environmental change.
摘要：
我们对环境变化不同方向的生态系统变化轨迹相似性的理解是有限的。例如,优势生物对环境变化的不同方向表现出相同的反应，也就是说,它们表现出对称的反应吗？在这里，我们探索这种响应对称性是否由底层生物系统特征的对称性决定和控制(即，系统对称性)，例如在生物和非生物过程的网络和强度中，和环境变化的对称性(即，环境对称性)。对于这种探索，我们开发并使用了一个由相互抑制驱动的微生物生态系统的简单数学模型，其中我们可以改变系统和环境对称性的数量。我们的结果表明，完美的系统和环境对称性确实会产生完美的响应对称性。此外，在生物系统或环境中引入不对称性会按比例增加响应不对称性。这些发现表明，在生态系统结构和相互作用强度中使用对称性来更好地理解和预测环境变化的退化和恢复阶段的相似性。
