Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences?
Summary: There is increasing interest in applying resilience concepts at different scales of biological organization to address major interdisciplinary challenges from cancer to climate change. It is unclear, however, whether resilience can be a unifying concept consistently applied across the bread...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2024-05-01
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| Series: | iScience |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224006990 |
| _version_ | 1797199842850635776 |
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| author | J. Michael Reed Benjamin E. Wolfe L. Michael Romero |
| author_facet | J. Michael Reed Benjamin E. Wolfe L. Michael Romero |
| author_sort | J. Michael Reed |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Summary: There is increasing interest in applying resilience concepts at different scales of biological organization to address major interdisciplinary challenges from cancer to climate change. It is unclear, however, whether resilience can be a unifying concept consistently applied across the breadth of the biological sciences, or whether there is limited capacity for integration. In this review, we draw on literature from molecular biology to community ecology to ascertain commonalities and shortcomings in how resilience is measured and interpreted. Resilience is studied at all levels of biological organization, although the term is often not used. There is a suite of resilience mechanisms conserved across biological scales, and there are tradeoffs that affect resilience. Resilience is conceptually useful to help diverse researchers think about how biological systems respond to perturbations, but we need a richer lexicon to describe the diversity of perturbations, and we lack widely applicable metrics of resilience. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T07:22:11Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-91681f2634cb4369b437d346ebff109f |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2589-0042 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T07:22:11Z |
| publishDate | 2024-05-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | iScience |
| spelling | doaj.art-91681f2634cb4369b437d346ebff109f2024-04-21T04:14:29ZengElsevieriScience2589-00422024-05-01275109478Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences?J. Michael Reed0Benjamin E. Wolfe1L. Michael Romero2Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford 02155, MA, USA; Corresponding authorDepartment of Biology, Tufts University, Medford 02155, MA, USADepartment of Biology, Tufts University, Medford 02155, MA, USASummary: There is increasing interest in applying resilience concepts at different scales of biological organization to address major interdisciplinary challenges from cancer to climate change. It is unclear, however, whether resilience can be a unifying concept consistently applied across the breadth of the biological sciences, or whether there is limited capacity for integration. In this review, we draw on literature from molecular biology to community ecology to ascertain commonalities and shortcomings in how resilience is measured and interpreted. Resilience is studied at all levels of biological organization, although the term is often not used. There is a suite of resilience mechanisms conserved across biological scales, and there are tradeoffs that affect resilience. Resilience is conceptually useful to help diverse researchers think about how biological systems respond to perturbations, but we need a richer lexicon to describe the diversity of perturbations, and we lack widely applicable metrics of resilience.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224006990EcologyBiological sciencesMolecular biologyEvolutionary biologySystems biology |
| spellingShingle | J. Michael Reed Benjamin E. Wolfe L. Michael Romero Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences? iScience Ecology Biological sciences Molecular biology Evolutionary biology Systems biology |
| title | Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences? |
| title_full | Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences? |
| title_fullStr | Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences? |
| title_short | Is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences? |
| title_sort | is resilience a unifying concept for the biological sciences |
| topic | Ecology Biological sciences Molecular biology Evolutionary biology Systems biology |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224006990 |
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