  Vortices are the fundamental units of turbulent flow. Understanding their
stability properties therefore provides fundamental insights on the nature of
turbulence itself. In this contribution I briefly review the phenomenological
aspects of the instability of elliptic streamlines, in the hydro (elliptic
instability) and hydromagnetic (magneto-elliptic instability) regimes. Vortex
survival in disks is a balance between vortex destruction by these mechanisms,
and vortex production by others, namely, the Rossby wave instability and the
baroclinic instability.
