Ecosystem antifragility: Beyond integrity and resilience

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1 Red ambiente y sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecología A.C, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
2 Doctorado en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, UAM-Cuajimalpa., cdmx, cdmx, Mexico
3 IIMAS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, cdmx, Mexico
4 Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, cdmx, cdmx, Mexico
5 ITMO University, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation, St. Petersburg, Russia
6 Cátedras CONACyT, Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), cdmx, Mexico
7 Red ambiente y sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
8 Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), CDMX, Mexico
9 Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, cdmx, Mexico
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27813v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Mathematical Biology
Keywords
Antifragility, Ecosystem Integrity, Resilience, Complexity
Copyright
© 2019 Equihua Zamora et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Equihua Zamora M, Espinosa M, Gershenson C, López-Corona O, Munguia M, Pérez-Maqueo O, Ramírez-Carrillo E. 2019. Ecosystem antifragility: Beyond integrity and resilience. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27813v1

Abstract

We review the concept of ecosystem resilience in its relation to ecosystem integrity from an information theory approach. We summarize the literature on the subject identifying three main narratives: ecosystem properties that enable them to be more resilient; ecosystem response to perturbations; and complexity. We also include original ideas with theoretical and quantitative developments with application examples. The main contribution is a new way to rethink resilience, that is mathematically formal and easy to evaluate heuristically in real-world applications: ecosystem antifragility. An ecosystem is antifragile if it benefits from environmental variability. Antifragility therefore goes beyond robustness or resilience because while resilient/robust systems are merely perturbation-resistant, antifragile structures not only withstand stress but also benefit from it.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.