Pollen

• Met with Alan to discuss the conceptual model for regime shift. His suggestion was to look at Sugihara's method of prediction by looking at the difference paths of different systems - useful for when we have lots of data, even if it's sparse for individual sites. Some papers to look at are :
  • http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/76859 - "Distinguishing Error from Chaos in Ecological Time Series"
  • http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/54223 - "Nonlinear Forecasting for the Classification of Natural Time Series"
  • http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature06851 - "Why fishing magnifies fluctuations in fish abundance"
  • http://www.pnas.org/content/93/6/2608.full.pdf - "Nonlinear control of heart rate variability in human infants"
• Question as relevant as whether a regime shift is coming is whether a regime shift is happening - whether you've entered a new dynamic regime. For high-dimensional systems, looking at summary data does a poor job of this - it's better to look at the dynamics of many components. Could be interesting to compare % tree species to all of the species

• Biggest question - Are there enough data at a site-level in the pollen?

  Theoretical Ecology

  • Read May, R.M. 1981. Models for single populations. in May, R.M., ed. Theoretical Ecology.
  • Lecture on time delays and instability. See notes