Atmospheric pollution contributed to destabilizing a small mammal community amid four decades of environmental changes

Atmospheric pollution is linked to causally destabilizing a six-species small-mammal community in the Black Triangle of Europe (Czechia), with an abrupt late-1990s decline triggering a delayed critical transition.

• Why it matters: Climate and land-use shifts coincided with major pollution decreases, but the ecological dynamics and instability mechanisms behind these parallel changes were unclear.
• What they did: Using 39 years (1986–2024) of semiannual abundances for six small-mammal species plus monthly pollution, NDVI, meteorology, and soil moisture, the study applied Empirical Dynamic Modelling (EDM) to infer chaos and causal, time-varying feedbacks.
• The result: Pollution primarily affected dominant omnivores and strengthened species interactions, while a second chaos route involved vegetation dynamics and soil moisture, especially for shrews; adding environmental predictors improved out-of-sample forecasts.

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