Optimization hardness constrains ecological transients
Fig 2
Long-lived transients in ill-conditioned ecosystems.
(A) Equilibration of a random food web without (top) and with (bottom) a pair of functionally-redundant species. Long-lived transients appear in the latter case. (B) Settling time versus condition number
for 104 random communities; dashed line shows the scaling expected for an iterative linear program solver.