The Introduced Hawaiian Avifauna Reconsidered: Evidence for Self-Organized Criticality?

Timothy H. Keitt and Pablo A. Marquet

Working Papers from Santa Fe Institute

Abstract: Over the last century, many bird species have been introduced into the Hawaiian islands. The data indicate a scenario in which island communities build up to a critical number of species above which avalanches of extinctions occur. Plotting the distribution of extinction event sizes approximates a power-law in accordance with Bak et al.'s notion of a self-organized critical system. The lengths of times between introduction and extinction for different species also exhibit power-law scaling. These results suggest that ecological communities are not characterized by a well defined equilibrium, but rather by a detailed balance which is minimally stable to perturbations such that species introductions can trigger extinction cascades.

Date: 1995-10
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:safiwp:95-10-088

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