These departures reflect selforganizing interactions among living systems of animals, plants, people and physical processes over narrower ranges of scale. These departures create a discontinuous pattern of aggregations and discontinuities and they entrain a complex set of related variables.

The discontinuous patterns are conservative, and determine, in part, how resilient the systems are and how robust to modifi cation by policy or by exogenous change.

Understanding the scaled nature of ecosystems and other complex systems and the scale breaks intrinsic within them has led to a better understanding of the manner in which ecological resilience is generated from biological diversity, and how novelty arises from the structure of complex systems.

About Profesor Allen
Prof. Craig Allen is Leader and Associate Professor at Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.

Allen received his Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida in 1997, a MS in Wildlife Science from Texas Tech University in 1993 and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in 1989.

He held a post-docposition in Zoology at the University of Florida working with C.S. Holling on investigations of the relationships between diversity and resilience, and variability and scale breaks in biological and other systems. Dr. Allen´s research focuses upon the interactions among species and landscapes, especially focusing upon invasions and resilience in complex systems.