Are Warning Signals specific to Catastrophic Transitions?

There is a lot of interest on the limits of resilience indicators and on whether they are uniquely associated with catastrophic transitions. We tried to shed light on that question in a short piece that just appeared in Oikos. There, we show that the same early warnings may signal non catastrophic transitions, but the same transitions are as well bifurcation points. Thus, it is not surprising that the same expectations for signals of deteriorating resilience are universal prior to any (local) bifurcation. The challenge remains in finding signals that would be specific to the catastrophic, unexpected, and irreversible shifts.

highlighted in Editor’s choice in Oikos