| Grant number: | 17/05521-0 |
| Support type: | Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor |
| Effective date (Start): | February 02, 2018 |
| Effective date (End): | October 01, 2018 |
| Field of knowledge: | Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics |
| Principal Investigator: | Iberê Luiz Caldas |
| Grantee: | Everton Santos Medeiros |
| Supervisor abroad: | Ulrike Feudel |
| Home Institution: | Instituto de Física (IF). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
| Local de pesquisa : | Carl von Ossietzky University, Germany |
| Associated to the scholarship: | 13/26598-0 - Fractal boundaries between chaos and periodicity in the parameters space, BP.PD |
Abstract The rate at which Earth's ecosystems lose biodiversity through extinctions is increasing due to human activity. Generally, the disappearance of a species in a ecosystem occur gradually, offering ways to revert extinctions. However, the existence of oscillating states in ecosystems, mainly due to external forcing, may lead to whole different scenario. Specifically, we propose that the processes that lead to unavoidable extinctions is very localized and might be triggered in tipping points, and the smoothness observed in the disappearance of a species is due to the transient dynamics associated to the tipping point. From this point of view, the ways to prevent extinction processes must be applied earlier, and the methods to state a species as threatened with extinction must be reconsidered. In order to verify that, during an academic visit to Prof. Dr. Ulrike Feudel, we address triggering processes in ecological networks using the framework of bifurcations theory. In our approach, a system bifurcation destroys a stable dynamical representation of a species, triggering dynamical transients that correspond to their gradual disappearance. More specifically, we are going to induce bifurcations in the network nodes to explore the appearance and the effects of transient dynamics in a global network scale. Additionally, to investigate the node's local stability, we are going to apply tools, such as critical slowing down, known to identify the approaching to tipping points in low-dimensional systems. | |