The stability of benthic ecosystems

Physicists have two conceptions of the stability of systems: global and neighbourhood stability. Global stability corresponds to the idea of successional changes leading to climax communities. Yet, neighbourhood stability is shown to be a more realistic model for changes in dominance of marine benthic sediment-living communities. The factors inducing state changes in dominance pattern were shown to be principally biological interactions. In order to model the stability of benthic ecosystems, much more attention must be given to natural history-type studies of biological interactions. Furthermore, mathematical models usually assume that the systems are globally stable. Should neighbourhood stability prove to be the rule for benthic systems then realistic models of such systems will be an order of magnitude more complex.