Optimization hardness constrains ecological transients
Fig 5
Transient chaos due to slow manifold scattering.
(A) The "pachinko" mechanism for ill-conditioned dynamics, in which slow manifolds temporarily disperse neighboring trajectories that later reunite at the global equilibrium. (B) Caustics in the Fast Lyapunov Indicator () versus initial conditions on a two-dimensional slice through the N-dimensional space of initial species densities.