Wildfires, floods, pollution, and overfishing are among the many disruptions that can change the balance of ecosystems, sometimes endangering the future of entire species. But evaluating these ecosystems to determine which species are most at risk, in order to focus preservation actions and policies where they are most needed, is a challenging task. Most such efforts assume that ecosystems are essentially in a state of equilibrium, and that external perturbations cause a temporary shift before things eventually return to that equilibrium state. But that assumption fails to account for the…
