In October 2013, I was a speaker at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Society of Population Ecology, held in Osaka, Japan. The invitation came with the possibility of writing an article for a special issue of the journal Population Ecology.

 

I thought that this would be a great occasion to review the progress my laboratory has made on the study of the stability of large ecological systems. Even better, this article could outline a research program on this topic, listing the main challenges that we are facing.

My former student Si Tang (now pursuing a second PhD in Statistics) and I set to work with this idea in mind. You can now read this hybrid between a review and a list of “grand challenges”:

Stefano Allesina & Si Tang
The stability–complexity relationship at age 40: a random matrix perspective
Population Ecology, 2015

Our hope is that all the challenges we list will be solved by the time May’s 1972 paper turns 50.