Ecological robustness

Ecological robustness is the capacity of an ecosystem to maintain its structure and function in the face of perturbations. Unlike resilience, which emphasizes return to equilibrium after disturbance, robustness emphasizes the maintenance of function during disturbance. A robust ecosystem does not merely bounce back; it persists.

The concept is deeply connected to network ecology: robustness is a property of the interaction network, not of individual species. The loss of a species with low connectivity may have negligible effects, while the loss of a keystone species can trigger cascading failures.