Alternative perspectives on the maintenance of biodiversity and the assembly of ecological communities suggest that both processes cannot be investigated simultaneously. In this concept and synthesis, we challenge this view by presenting major theoretical advances in structural stability and permanence theory. These advances, which provide complementary views, allow studying the short- and long-term dynamics of ecological communities as changes in species richness, composition, and abundance. Here, the global attractor, technically named informational structure (IS), is the central element to construct from information of species' intrinsic growth rates and their strength and sign of interactions. The global attractor has four main properties: (1) It contains all the limits of what is feasible and unfeasible of the dynamical behavior of an ecological system, therefore, (2) it provides a thorough characterization of all combinations of species' richness and composition in which species can coexist (i.e., feasible and stable equilibrium), (3) as well as all connections (paths) of assembly between coexisting communities. Importantly, (4) such topology of coexisting communities and their connections changes when environmental (abiotic and biotic) variation affects the ability of species to grow and interact with others. Overall, these four properties allow switching from a traditional evaluation of species coexistence at equilibrium to a much more realistic nonequilibrium perspective where changes in the structure of the global attractor underlie the transient ecological dynamics. Several fields in ecology can benefit from the study of an IS. For instance, it can serve to evaluate community responses after the end of a perturbation, to design restoration trajectories, to study the consequences of biological invasions on the persistence of native species within communities, or to assess ecosystem health status. We illustrate this latter possibility with empirical observations of 7 years in Mediterranean annual grasslands. We document that extremely wet or dry years generate ISs supporting few coexisting communities and few assembly paths. The remaining communities distinguish winners from losers of ongoing climate change and indicate the limits to future community assembly opportunities. A fully tractable operational framework is readily available to understand and predict the assembly and dynamics of ecological communities in an ever-changing world.

中文翻译：

---

在不断变化的世界中，生态群落的集合和动态


关于生物多样性维护和生态群落组装的不同观点表明，这两个过程不能同时进行研究。在这个概念和综合中，我们通过提出结构稳定性和持久性理论的主要理论进展来挑战这一观点。这些进步提供了互补的观点，允许研究生态群落的短期和长期动态，如物种丰富度、组成和丰度的变化。在这里，全球吸引子，技术上称为信息结构 （IS），是从物种的内在生长速率及其强度和相互作用迹象的信息中构建的核心元素。全局吸引子有四个主要特性：（1） 它包含生态系统动力学行为的可行和不可行的所有限制，因此，（2） 它提供了物种丰富度和物种可以共存的所有组合的详尽特征（即，可行和稳定的平衡），（3） 以及共存群落之间组装的所有连接（路径）。重要的是，（4） 当环境（非生物和生物）变化影响物种生长和与其他物种互动的能力时，共存群落及其联系的这种拓扑结构会发生变化。总的来说，这四个特性允许从传统的平衡状态下物种共存评估切换到更现实的非平衡视角，其中全局吸引子结构的变化是瞬态生态动力学的基础。生态学的几个领域可以从 IS 研究中受益。 例如，它可以用于评估扰动结束后的群落反应，设计恢复轨迹，研究生物入侵对群落内本地物种持久性的影响，或评估生态系统健康状况。我们通过在地中海一年生草原 7 年的经验观察来说明后一种可能性。我们记录了极度潮湿或干燥的年份会产生支持很少共存群落和很少组装路径的 IS。其余社区区分了持续气候变化的赢家和输家，并指出了未来社区集会机会的局限性。一个完全可处理的操作框架随时可用，用于理解和预测不断变化的世界中生态群落的组装和动态。