When and why ecological systems respond to the rate rather than the magnitude of environmental changes

Ecologists and conservation biologists have become quite familiar with the concept of tipping points: abrupt changes in an ecosystem's state that occur after a period of relative stasis. Most of the familiar ecological examples of tipping points occur either because a once-stable state has lost stability, or the system has been subjected to a particularly large perturbation and transitions to an alternative stable state, distinct from the pre-perturbed state. A different class of tipping points, known as rate-induced tipping (or r-tipping) points, are likely present in many ecological communities but remain little known in the field. Rate-induced tipping occurs when an environmental change is too fast for the community to track; even though the original state never loses stability, the ecological response to the change is too slow to remain in that stable state's basin of attraction. R-tipping is part of the broader phenomenon of rate dependence that arises because ecological systems cannot respond instantaneously to external changes. In this article, we provide a non-technical introduction to the theory of rate dependent responses to change, discuss the implications of this theory to conservation problems, and illustrate its application through a series of case studies. When a tipping point is rate dependent, effective management relies not only on the type of intervention used but also the rate at which it is applied. Our work highlights how a mechanistic understanding of different types of tipping points leads to stronger guidance on when, where, and how different interventions can used to achieve conservation goals. © 2024 The Author(s)