In the context of

ecological stability In ecology, an ecosystem is said to possess ecological stability (or equilibrium) if it is capable of returning to its equilibrium state after a perturbation (a capacity known as resilience) or does not experience unexpected large changes in its c ...

, resistance is the property of

communities A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, to ...

or populations to remain "essentially unchanged" when subject to

disturbance Disturbance and its variants may refer to: Math and science * Disturbance (ecology), a temporary change in average environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem * Disturbance (geology), linear zone of faults and folds ...

. The inverse of resistance is sensitivity.

Stability and disturbance

Resistance is one of the major aspects of

. Volker Grimm and Christian Wissel identified 70 terms and 163 distinct definitions of the various aspects of ecological stability, but found that they could be reduced to three fundamental properties: "staying essentially unchanged", "returning to the reference state...after a temporary disturbance" and "persistence through time of an ecological system." Resistant communities are able to remain "essentially unchanged" despite disturbance. Although commonly seen as distinct from

resilience Resilience, resilient, resiliency, or ''variation'', may refer to: Science Ecology * Ecological resilience, the capacity of an ecosystem to recover from perturbations ** Climate resilience, the ability of systems to recover from climate change * ...

, Brian Walker and colleagues considered resistance to be a component of resilience in their expanded definition of resilience, while Fridolin Brand used a definition of resilience that he described as "close to the stability concept 'resistance', as identified by Grimm and Wissel (1997)". The inverse of resistance is sensitivity - sensitive species or communities show large changes when subject to environmental stress or disturbance.

Examples

In 1988,

Hurricane Joan Hurricane Joan was a long lived and powerful tropical cyclone that caused death and destruction in over a dozen countries in the Caribbean and Central America. Moving on a due west course for nearly two weeks in October 1988, Hurricane Joan caus ...

hit the rainforests along

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the coun ...

's Caribbean coast. Douglas Boucher and colleagues contrasted the resistant response of '' Qualea paraensis'' with the resilient response of '' Vochysia ferruginea''; the mortality rate was low for ''Q. paraensis'' (despite extensive damage to the trees), but the growth rates of surviving trees were also low and few seedlings established. Despite the disturbance, populations were essentially unchanged. In contrast, ''V. ferruginea'' experienced very high rates of mortality in the hurricane but showed very high rates of seedling recruitment. As a result, population densities of the species increased. In their study of

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispa ...

n montane forests affected by

Hurricane Hugo Hurricane Hugo was a powerful Cape Verde tropical cyclone that inflicted widespread damage across the northeastern Caribbean and the Southeastern United States in September 1989. Across its track, Hugo affected approximately 2 million peopl ...

in 1988,

Peter Bellingham Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

and colleagues used the degree of hurricane damage and the magnitude of the post-hurricane response to categorise tree species into four groups – resistant species (those with limited storm damage and low response), susceptible species (greater damage but low response), usurpers (limited damage but high response) and resilient species (greater damage and high response).

Introduced species

English ecologist

Charles Elton Charles Elton may refer to: *Charles Elton (Born, 1993) Professional Rugby Player for Otago Rugby * Charles Isaac Elton (1839–1900), English lawyer, politician, writer and antiquarian * Charles Sutherland Elton (1900–1991), English biologist ...

applied the term resistance to the ecosystem properties which limit the ability of

introduced species An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there ...

to successfully invade communities. These properties include both

abiotic factors In biology and ecology, abiotic components or abiotic factors are non-living chemical and physical parts of the environment that affect living organisms and the functioning of ecosystems. Abiotic factors and the phenomena associated with them unde ...

like temperature and drought, and

biotic factors An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...

including

competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, ind ...

parasitism Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson ha ...

predation Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...

and the lack of necessary

mutualists Mutualism describes the ecological Biological interaction, interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit. Mutualism is a common type of ecological interaction. Prominent examples include most vascular plants engag ...

. Higher

species diversity Species diversity is the number of different species that are represented in a given community (a dataset). The effective number of species refers to the number of equally abundant species needed to obtain the same mean proportional species abundan ...

and lower resource availability can also contribute to resistance.

References

{{Modelling ecosystems, expanded=other Ecology terminology Ecological restoration Conservation biology