Figure 2.

Potential responses of a system to a disturbance. System performance is an experiment-specific measure of system functionality (harvesting rate, brood production rate, traffic flow). Time t₀ is the start of the experiment, pre-disturbance, t_d indicates the start of the disturbance and t_r indicates the beginning of the recovery phase for one system and t_c indicates the point at which recovery is complete since system performance has returned to pre-disturbance levels. (a) Shows a system that has invested in resistance and as a result does not experience a decrease in functionality after the disturbance. (b) Shows a system that is using redirection. Although there is an initial decrease in performance, this is rapidly mitigated by rerouting flows using existing infrastructure. (c) Shows a system that uses primarily reconstruction-based resilience strategies. Since reconstruction requires the construction of new infrastructure, it takes longer to recover pre-disturbance performance. (d) Shows a non-resilient system which does not recover pre-disturbance performance. (Online version in colour.)