Regional zooplankton dispersal provides spatial insurance for ecosystem function

Changing environmental conditions are affecting diversity and ecosystem function globally. Theory suggests that dispersal from a regional species pool may buffer against changes in local community diversity and ecosystem function after a disturbance through the establishment of functionally redundant tolerant species. The spatial insurance provided by dispersal may decrease through time after environmental change as the local community monopolizes resources and reduces community invasibility. To test for evidence of the spatial insurance hypothesis and to determine the role dispersal timing plays in this response we conducted a field experiment using crustacean zooplankton communities in a subarctic region that is expected to be highly impacted by climate change – Churchill, Canada. Three experiments were conducted where nutrients, salt, and dispersal were manipulated. The three experiments differed in time‐since‐disturbance that the dispersers were added. We found that coarse measures of diversity (i.e. species richness, evenness, and Shannon–Weiner diversity) were generally resistant to large magnitude disturbances, and that dispersal had the most impact on diversity when dispersers were added shortly after disturbance. Ecosystem functioning (chl‐a) was degraded in disturbed communities, but dispersal recovered ecosystem function to undisturbed levels. This spatial insurance for ecosystem function was mediated through changes in community composition and the relative abundance of functional groups. Results suggest that regional diversity and habitat connectivity will be important in the future to maintain ecosystem function by introducing functionally redundant species to promote compensatory dynamics.     

Predicting Plant Diversity Response to Disturbance: Applicability of the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis and Mass Ratio Hypothesis

Predicting the relationships between disturbance, biodiversity and productivity of ecosystems continue to preoccupy ecologists and resource managers. Two hypotheses underpin many of the discussions. The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH), which proposes that biodiversity peaks at intermediate levels of disturbance, is often extended to predict that productivity follows the same response pattern. The Mass Ratio Hypothesis (MRH) proposes that the biological traits of the dominant species are the critical drivers of ecosystem function (e.g., productivity) and that these species increase in biomass rapidly after disturbance then stabilize. As a consequence, species diversity first peaks then declines after disturbance as a few species dominate the site. Both provide a conceptual link among disturbance, species diversity and productivity (an index of ecosystem function). We assessed the current state of empirical support for these two hypotheses with a literature survey and determined if their conformance is related to ecosystem type or site productivity. Conformance of IDH reported in past reviews (considering all ecosystems) ranged from 16 to 21%. This contrasts with our finding that in terrestrial ecosystems conformance to IDH was 46% (22 of 48 studies), 17% studies reported non-compliance, and 23% reported inconclusive results. Most studies explained their results with respect to IDH or MRH. Only two studies were specifically designed to test the validity of IDH or MRH. We conclude that (i) the IDH is mostly applicable to predict species diversity response to disturbance in upland sites of medium to high productivity and the MRH is applicable to organic sites of low productivity; (ii) there is a critical need for more studies specifically designed to test these hypotheses in natural ecosystems using common protocols; and (iii) enhanced understanding of these models will add value in refining management policies and in the selection of meaningful diversity indicators of sustainability.     

Do human disturbance variables influence more on fish community structure and function than natural variables in the Wei River basin,China?

Quantifying how human disturbance affects biotic communities in the context of other natural and spatial factors is a vital precursor to develop environmental management strategies to effectively conserve and restore ecosystem. This is particularly so for freshwater ecosystems in heavily populated and increasingly disturbed regions such as the Wei River basin in north-west China. In this paper, we employed both species’ abundance and functional metrics (displaying species diversity, habitat, trophic level, tolerance and abundance) to quantify the effect of human disturbance using canonical correspondence analysis. The results showed that spatial, natural and human disturbance variables can explain 40.1% and 33.7% of the total variation in fish abundance without rare species and with all species, respectively. 37.1% and 37.9% variation can be explained in fish metrics without rare species and with all species. Human disturbance variables explained most of the total variations in the four fish matrices. Inclusion or exclusion of rare species will influence the total explained variation from three factors in fish metrics, but little in fish abundance. Rare species will highlight this relationship with human disturbance gradient. For fish metrics, removing rare species will reflect some wrong information for human disturbance gradient. We recommend to include rare species for fish metrics to assess the impact of environment.     

Population dynamics, disturbance, and pattern evolution: identifying the fundamental scales of organization in a model ecosystem

We used auto- and cross-correlation analysis and Ripley's K-function analysis to analyze spatiotemporal pattern evolution in a spatially explicit simulation model of a semiarid shrubland (Karoo, South Africa) and to determine the impact of small-scale disturbances on system dynamics. Without disturnities bance, local dynamics were driven by a pattern of cyclic succession, where 'colonizer' and 'successor' species alternately replaced each other. This results in a strong pattern of negative correlation in the temporal distribution of colonizer and successor species. As disturbance rates were increased, the relationship shifted from being negatively correlated in time to being positively correlated-the dynamics became decoupled from the ecologically driven cyclic succession and were increasingly influenced by abiotic factors (e.g., rainfall events). Further analysis of the spatial relationships among colonizer and successor species showed that, without disturbance, periods of attraction and repulsion between colonizer and successor species alternate cyclically at intermediate spatial scales. This was due to the spatial 'memory' embedded in the system through the process of cyclic succession. With the addition of disturbance, this pattern breaks down, although there is some indication of increasing ecological organization at broader spatial scales. We suggest that many of the insights that can be gained through spatially explicit models will only be obtained through a direct analysis of the spatial patterns produced.     

Patch dynamics and metapopulation theory: the case of successional species

We present a mathematical framework that combines extinction-colonization dynamics with the dynamics of patch succession. We draw an analogy between the epidemiological categorization of individuals (infected, susceptible, latent and resistant) and the patch structure of a spatially heterogeneous landscape (occupied-suitable, empty-suitable, occupied-unsuitable and empty-unsuitable). This approach allows one to consider life-history attributes that influence persistence in patchy environments (e.g., longevity, colonization ability) in concert with extrinsic processes (e.g., disturbances, succession) that lead to spatial heterogeneity in patch suitability. It also allows the incorporation of seed banks and other dormant life forms, thus broadening patch occupancy dynamics to include sink habitats. We use the model to investigate how equilibrium patch occupancy is influenced by four critical parameters: colonization rate, extinction rate, disturbance frequency and the rate of habitat succession. This analysis leads to general predictions about how the temporal scaling of patch succession and extinction-colonization dynamics influences long-term persistence. We apply the model to herbaceous, early-successional species that inhabit open patches created by periodic disturbances. We predict the minimum disturbance frequency required for viable management of such species in the Florida scrub ecosystem.     

Use of a municipal environmental quality index for understanding and management of aquatic habitats and fish populations

This study describes the use of a technique developed to assess environmental quality in a municipality. The Environmental Quality Index (EQI) is a tool that can aid land-use planning, permitting a maximum understanding of the implications for the ecology of an area. A matrix shows the status of each of a series of environmental parameters at each time that an EQI is formulated. Time series analysis is used to quantify environmental impacts on a discrete community's ecosystem: this process allows the graphing of the dynamics of a changing natural resource. Thus, correlation of abiotic changes can be made with changes in biota: for instance, a correlation between proximity to effluents from sewage treatment plants and fish and aquatic plant species diversity is useful information in the managcrnent of fishery resources. Similarly, knowledge of the rate of shift from lotic to lentic waters, due to increased impounding, and its relationship to aquatic plant species diversity is important for land-use planners who are sensitive to environmental considerations. Decisions made with environmental preservation in mind will help to maintain high quality aquatic habitats.     

食物链长度远因与近因研究进展综述

食物链长度是生态系统的基本属性,其变化决定着群落结构和生态系统功能。稳定同位素分析技术的进步推进了生态系统中食物链长度决定因子相关研究的开展。尽管近期的研究证明了食物链长度与资源可利用性、生态系统大小、干扰等远因之间的关系,但是对于食物网内部结构变化这一近因对食物链长度的影响作用关注较少。综述了边界明确和开放类型淡水生态系统中食物链长度的相关研究进展;探讨了远因和近因机制在决定食物链长度中的作用;给出了判断不同层次和尺度上决定食物链长度机制的概念框架;为今后更好的开展不同生态系统间食物链长度的比较研究提出了建议。     

Grazing and the vanishing complexity of plant association networks in grasslands

Interactions are key drivers of the functioning and fate of plant communities. A traditional way to measure them is to use pairwise experiments, but such experiments do not scale up to species-rich communities. For those, using association networks based on spatial patterns may provide a more realistic approach. While this method has been successful in abiotically-stressed environments (alpine and arid ecosystems), it is unclear how well it generalizes to other types of environments. We help fill this knowledge gap by documenting how the structure of plant communities changes in a Mediterranean dry grassland grazed by sheep using plant spatial association networks. We investigated how the structure of these networks changed with grazing intensity to show the effect of biotic disturbance on community structure. We found that these grazed grassland communities were mostly dominated by negative associations, suggesting a dominance of interference over facilitation regardless of the disturbance level. The topology of the networks revealed that the number of associations were not evenly-distributed across species, but rather that a small subset of species established most negative associations under low grazing conditions. All these aspects of spatial organization vanished under high level of grazing as association networks became more similar to null expectations. Our study shows that grazed herbaceous plant communities display a highly non-random organization that responds strongly to disturbance and can be measured through association networks. This approach thus appears insightful to test general hypotheses about plant communities, and in particular understand how anthropogenic perturbations affect the organization of ecological communities.     

Spatial analyses of intertidal assemblages on sheltered rocky shores

Abstract Understanding processes in complex assemblages depends on good understanding of spatial and temporal patterns of structure at various spatial scales. There has been little quantitative information about spatial patterns and natural temporal changes in intertidal assemblages on sheltered rocky shores in temperate Australia. Natural changes and responses to anthropogenic disturbances in these habitats cannot be accurately measured and assessed without quantitative data on patterns of natural variability in space and through time. This paper describes some suitable quantitative methods for examining spatial and temporal patterns of diversity and abundances of highshore, midshore and lowshore intertidal assemblages and the important component species for a number of shores in a bay that has not been severely altered by human disturbance. Despite a diverse flora and fauna on these shores, the midshore and lowshore assemblages on sheltered shores were characterized by a few species which were also the most important in discriminating among assemblages on a shore and, for each assemblage, among different shores. The same set of species was also important for measuring small-scale patchiness within each assemblage (i.e. between replicate sites on a shore). Therefore, these data provide a rationale for selecting species that are useful for measuring differences and changes in abundance among places and times at different scales and, hence, can be used in the more complex sampling designs necessary to detect environmental impacts. There was considerable spatial variability in all assemblages and all species (or taxa) examined at scales of metres, tens of metres and kilometres. There were no clear seasonal trends for most measures, with as much or more variability at intervals of 3 months as from year to year. Most interactions between spatial and temporal measures were at the smallest scale, with different sites on the same shore generally showing different changes from time to time. The cause(s) of this apparently idiosyncratic variability1 were not examined, but some potential causes are discussed. These data are appropriate for testing hypotheses about the applicability of these findings to other relatively undisturbed sheltered shores, about effects of different anthropogenic disturbances on sheltered intertidal assemblages and to test hypotheses about differences in intertidal assemblages on sheltered versus wave-exposed shores.     

Floristic composition and structure of a premontane moist forest in Central Valley of Costa Rica]

The floristic composition and structure of a premontane moist forest remnant were studied in the El Rodeo Protected Zone, Central Valley of Costa Rica. Three one-hectare plots were established in the non-disturbed forest, and all trees with a diameter at breast height (dbh) of 10 cm or greater were marked, measured and identified. The plots were located within a radius of 500 m from each other. A total of 106 tree species were recorded in the three plots. Average values: species richness 69.6 species ha-1, abundance 509 individuals ha-1, basal area 36.35 m2 ha-1. Total diversity was 3.54 (Shannon Index, H'), and the species similarity among the plots ranged between S = 0.68 and 0.70 (S?rensen Similarity Index). Most tree species are represented by few individuals (five or less). There is a lack of emergent trees and arborescent palms in the forest canopy. According to the Familial Importance Value, Moraceae, followed by Fabaceae, Lauraceae, and Sapotaceae, largely dominates this forest. Pseudolmedia oxyphillaria (Moraceae) is the dominant species (Importance Value Index), accounting for 25% of all the marked trees in the plots, followed by Clarisia racemosa (Moraceae), Heisteria concinna (Olacaceae), and Brosimum alicastrum (Moraceae). The size class distributions were similar among plots, and in general followed the expected J-inverted shape. Differences in tree abundance, floristic composition, and spatial distribution of some species among the plots suggest heterogeneity of this ecosystem's arborescent vegetation. Moreover, it is an important natural reservoir for the conservation of rare and endangered tree species in a national level. Using these results as a baseline, this study should start a long term monitoring of the structure and composition of this very reduced and fragmented ecosystem.     

Meta‐analysis of the effects of small mammal disturbances on species diversity,richness and plant biomass

The disturbance activities of many small mammals, including building burrows, mounds, trails and tunnels, and herbivory, can have significant impacts on their ecosystems, both through trophic and non‐trophic interactions. Some species have large enough impacts through their disturbances to be classed as ecosystem engineers and/or keystone species. Others have negative or null effects. However, at present it is difficult to predict whether the disturbances created by a given species will have significant effects on common measures of ecosystem response such as species richness, diversity and biomass. We ask whether variables characterizing disturbance type, responding species, disturbance‐making species and the environment can predict changes in magnitude and direction of effects on biomass, richness and diversity. We test these predictions with a meta‐analysis of 106 data entries in a database derived from 63 papers, representing 40 small mammal species. We find that small mammal disturbances in general increase biomass, and both increase and decrease richness and diversity. We also identify individual environmental, disturbance‐related, and species‐related variables associated with these changes in magnitude and direction. We discuss the likely interactions between these variables, and how current proxy measures of disturbance impact could be replaced by more accurate direct measures. We recommend that future studies focus on conditions characterized by combinations of variables we identify as significant, in order to understand how these variable interactions (which cannot be analysed through meta‐analysis) affect disturbance outcomes. Based on the gaps in our database and results, we also recommend that future studies directly measure disturbance impact, measure disturbance effects on animal and well as plant taxa, and take measurements on multiple scales.     

Habitat-mediated facilitation and counteracting ecosystem engineering interactively influence ecosystem responses to disturbance

Recovery of an ecosystem following disturbance can be severely hampered or even shift altogether when a point disturbance exceeds a certain spatial threshold. Such scale-dependent dynamics may be caused by preemptive competition, but may also result from diminished self-facilitation due to weakened ecosystem engineering. Moreover, disturbance can facilitate colonization by engineering species that alter abiotic conditions in ways that exacerbate stress on the original species. Consequently, establishment of such counteracting engineers might reduce the spatial threshold for the disturbance, by effectively slowing recovery and increasing the risk for ecosystem shifts to alternative states. We tested these predictions in an intertidal mudflat characterized by a two-state mosaic of hummocks (humps exposed during low tide) dominated by the sediment-stabilizing seagrass Zostera noltii) and hollows (low-tide waterlogged depressions dominated by the bioturbating lugworm Arenicola marina). In contrast to expectations, seagrass recolonized both natural and experimental clearings via lateral expansion and seemed unaffected by both clearing size and lugworm addition. Near the end of the growth season, however, an additional disturbance (most likely waterfowl grazing and/or strong hydrodynamics) selectively impacted recolonizing seagrass in the largest (1 m(2)) clearings (regardless of lugworm addition), and in those medium (0.25 m(2)) clearings where lugworms had been added nearly five months earlier. Further analyses showed that the risk for the disturbance increased with hollow size, with a threshold of 0.24 m(2). Hollows of that size were caused by seagrass removal alone in the largest clearings, and by a weaker seagrass removal effect exacerbated by lugworm bioturbation in the medium clearings. Consequently, a sufficiently large disturbance increased the vulnerability of recolonizing seagrass to additional disturbance by weakening seagrass engineering effects (sediment stabilization). Meanwhile, the counteracting ecosystem engineering (lugworm bioturbation) reduced that threshold size. Therefore, scale-dependent interactions between habitat-mediated facilitation, competition and disturbance seem to maintain the spatial two-state mosaic in this ecosystem.     

Ecological specialization and susceptibility to disturbance: conjectures and refutations

Niche breadth of species has been hypothesized to be associated with species' responses to disturbance. Disturbance is usually believed to affect specialists negatively, while generalists are believed to benefit from disturbance; we call this the "specialization-disturbance" hypothesis. We also propose an associated hypothesis (the "specialization-asymmetry-disturbance" hypothesis) under which both specialization and asymmetry of interactions would explain species' responses to disturbance. We test these hypotheses using data from a plant-pollinator system that has been grazed by cattle (i.e., a biological disturbance) in southern Argentina. We quantified specialization in species interactions, specialization of interaction partners, and species' responses to disturbance. We found no relationship between degree of specialization and a species' response to disturbance. We also found that plant-pollinator interactions tend to be asymmetric in this system; there was no relationship between the degree of specialization of a given species and the degree of specialization of its interaction partners. However, asymmetry of interactions did not explain the variability in species' responses to disturbance. Thus, both hypotheses are rejected by our data. Possible reasons include failure to assess crucial resources, substantial direct effects of disturbance, inaccurate measures of specialization, difficulty detecting highly nonlinear relationships, and limitations of a nonexperimental approach. Or, in fact, there may be no relationship between specialization and response to disturbance.     

Spatial patterns in leaf area and plant functional type cover across chronosequences of sagebrush ecosystems

Since most studies of ecosystem dynamics after disturbance require longer durations of study than the life span of most research careers, many studies rely on chronosequence approaches to substitute space for time. We tested the chronosequence approach for assessing the change in plant functional type cover and leaf area index (L) using three replicated mountain big sagebrush (Artemesia tridentata var. vaseyana (Rydb.) Boivin) dominated ecosystems in southern Wyoming. We further tested our broader inferences of mountain big sagebrush ecosystem chronosequences by assessing whether dynamics in spatial patterning of plant functional type cover and leaf area index would compromise the chronosequence approach. We hypothesized that (1) L and total cover increase with age at similar rates across replicated chronosequences, (2) spatial autocorrelation is greatest with shrub cover, and (3) spatial autocorrelation increases with age. We failed to reject all three hypotheses. Our analyses showed that mean shrub cover, total cover, and L all increased linearly with time since disturbance across all three replicated chronosequences. While neither graminoid nor forb cover was correlated with time since disturbance, graminoid cover did show an inverse relationship with shrub cover and L. Semivariogram analysis showed that spatial patterning increased with shrub cover and time since disturbance. Thus, while we cannot yet provide a process to fit the spatial patterns, the chronosequence approach for sagebrush ecosystems recovering from disturbance has survived a rigorous test because the mean changes in shrub cover, total cover, and L were replicable across three different sites.     

Grassland type and seasonal effects have a bigger influence on plant functional and taxonomical diversity than prairie dog disturbances in semiarid grasslands

1. Prairie dogs (Cynomys sp.) are considered keystone species and ecosystem engineers for their grazing and burrowing activities (summarized here as disturbances). As climate changes and its variability increases, the mechanisms underlying organisms'' interactions with their habitat will likely shift. Understanding the mediating role of prairie dog disturbance on vegetation structure, and its interaction with environmental conditions through time, will increase knowledge on the risks and vulnerability of grasslands.
2. Here, we compared how plant taxonomical diversity, functional diversity metrics, and community‐weighted trait means (CWM) respond to prairie dog C. mexicanus disturbance across grassland types and seasons (dry and wet) in a priority conservation semiarid grassland of Northeast Mexico.
3. Our findings suggest that functional metrics and CWM analyses responded to interactions between prairie dog disturbance, grassland type and season, whilst species diversity and cover measures were less sensitive to the role of prairie dog disturbance. We found weak evidence that prairie dog disturbance has a negative effect on vegetation structure, except for minimal effects on C4 and graminoid cover, but which depended mainly on season. Grassland type and season explained most of the effects on plant functional and taxonomic diversity as well as CWM traits. Furthermore, we found that leaf area as well as forb and annual cover increased during the wet season, independent of prairie dog disturbance.
4. Our results provide evidence that grassland type and season have a stronger effect than prairie dog disturbance on the vegetation of this short‐grass, water‐restricted grassland ecosystem. We argue that focusing solely on disturbance and grazing effects is misleading, and attention is needed on the relationships between vegetation and environmental conditions which will be critical to understand semiarid grassland dynamics under future climate change conditions in the region.

     

Fractal analysis of plant spatial patterns: a monitoring tool for vegetation transition shifts

Spatial heterogeneity, like species diversity, is an important ecosystem property. We examine the effects of land use on the diversity and spatial distribution of plants in five semi-arid communities of eastern Spain using non-linear methods to assess the spatialtemporal dynamics of plant populations. Specifically, we are interested in detecting long-term structural changes or drift in an ecosystem before it is too late to prevent irreversible degradation. Fractal analysis is used to characterize the complexity of plant spatial patterns and Information Theory indices are used to measure change in information flow with land use changes and soil substrate. We found that grazing favored diversity and heterogeneity of species distribution on the impoverished gypsum and saline substrate community, as opposed to the detrimental effect of grazing in the Alpha steppe community. Indeed, old-field succession after 30 years of abandonment showed a recovery of species diversity but not the spatial structure of the vegetation. Further, Information Fractal Dimension, representing the unpredictability of plant spatial patterns in the landscape, increased as we moved from a highly diverse to a less diverse community, revealing the change to a more scattered and homogeneous spatial plant distribution. The Information Fractal Dimension is a good estimator of ecosystem disturbance, independent of scale, and thus can be used to monitor ecosystem dynamics.     

Changes in the Spatial Distribution of Fishes in Lakes Along a Residential Development Gradient

As the human demand for freshwater natural resources such as fish and drinking water increases, we may rely more heavily on models to predict the response of aquatic ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic disturbance. Theses models in turn implicitly depend on the underlying spatial distribution of organisms. In terrestrial ecosystems, increased natural resource utilization has transformed habitat and changed the spatial distribution of organisms, with subsequent negative effects on biota. Recent studies in lakes demonstrate that human development of lakeshores alters the physical habitat and nutrient cycles. The impact of such disturbance by humans on the spatial distribution of aquatic organisms, however, remains unknown. Here we quantify the effect of lakeshore development on the spatial distribution of fishes in 23 lakes in the US Pacific Northwest. We found a significant decrease in the spatial aggregation of fishes with increased shoreline development by humans, reflecting a loss of refugia and resource heterogeneity that favors aggregation among fishes. We also found that lakes with a high perimeter–surface-area ratio and a relatively shallow littoral zone had much higher levels of fish aggregation, suggesting the importance of terrestrial inputs to lakes. Finally, we found a marginally significant decrease in fish spatial aggregation with increased total phosphorus concentration, but no effect of chlorophyll concentration, water transparency, the predator–prey ratio, or number of species on fish spatial distributions. These results suggest that anthropogenic modification of shorelines is significantly altering the spatial distribution of important aquatic organisms, and that these changes may have important implications for predictive modeling of ecosystem dynamics.     

Quantifying resilience of multiple ecosystem services and biodiversity in a temperate forest landscape

Resilience is increasingly being considered as a new paradigm of forest management among scientists, practitioners, and policymakers. However, metrics of resilience to environmental change are lacking. Faced with novel disturbances, forests may be able to sustain existing ecosystem services and biodiversity by exhibiting resilience, or alternatively these attributes may undergo either a linear or nonlinear decline. Here we provide a novel quantitative approach for assessing forest resilience that focuses on three components of resilience, namely resistance, recovery, and net change, using a spatially explicit model of forest dynamics. Under the pulse set scenarios, we explored the resilience of nine ecosystem services and four biodiversity measures following a one‐off disturbance applied to an increasing percentage of forest area. Under the pulse + press set scenarios, the six disturbance intensities explored during the pulse set were followed by a continuous disturbance. We detected thresholds in net change under pulse + press scenarios for the majority of the ecosystem services and biodiversity measures, which started to decline sharply when disturbance affected >40% of the landscape. Thresholds in net change were not observed under the pulse scenarios, with the exception of timber volume and ground flora species richness. Thresholds were most pronounced for aboveground biomass, timber volume with respect to the ecosystem services, and ectomycorrhizal fungi and ground flora species richness with respect to the biodiversity measures. Synthesis and applications. The approach presented here illustrates how the multidimensionality of stability research in ecology can be addressed and how forest resilience can be estimated in practice. Managers should adopt specific management actions to support each of the three components of resilience separately, as these may respond differently to disturbance. In addition, management interventions aiming to deliver resilience should incorporate an assessment of both pulse and press disturbances to ensure detection of threshold responses to disturbance, so that appropriate management interventions can be identified.     

New synthetic indicators to assess community resilience and restoration success

The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 sets as an objective the restoration of 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020. This challenge raises at least two major questions: (i) How to restore and (ii) how to measure restoration success of said ecosystems? Measurement of restoration success is necessary to assess objective achievement and to adjust management with regard to objectives. Numerous studies are being conducted to try to work out synthetic indices to assess ecosystem diversity or integrity in the context of global change. Nevertheless, at the community level, there is no index that allows the assessment of community integrity regarding its restoration or resilience, despite the fact that a lot of indicators are used such as species richness, Shannon diversity, multivariate analyses or similarity indices. We have therefore developed two new indices giving new insights on community states: the first index, coined as the Community Structure Integrity Index, measures the proportion of the species abundance in the reference community represented in the restored or degraded community, and the second index, coined as the Higher Abundance Index, measures the proportion of the species abundance in the restored or degraded community which is higher than in the reference community. We illustrate and discuss the use of these new indices with three examples: (i) fictitious communities, (ii) a recent restoration (2 years) of a Mediterranean temporary wetland (Camargue in France) in order to assess restoration efficiency, and (iii) a recently disturbed pseudo-steppe plant community (La Crau area in France) in order to assess natural resilience of the plant community. The indices provide summarized information on the success of restoration or on the resilience of the plant community, which both appear less positive than with standard indicators already used. The indices also provide additional insights useful for management purposes: the Community Structure Integrity Index can indicate whether the improving target species abundance is needed or not while the Higher Abundance Index can indicate whether controlling the high abundance of some species is needed in order to approach a reference ecosystem. These relatively simple indices developed on community composition and structure state can provide a base to further indices focusing on ecosystem functioning or services not only calculating values as a static point but also its temporal or spatial dynamic.