Related papers: Roots of diversity relations
Geographic ranges of communities of species evolve in response to environmental, ecological, and evolutionary forces. Understanding the effects of these forces on species' range dynamics is a major goal of spatial ecology. Previous…
A key unresolved question in microbial ecology is how the extraordinary diversity of microbiomes emerges from the behaviour of individual populations. This process is driven by the cross-feeding networks that structure these communities,…
A mathematical model of interacting species filling ecological niches left by the extinction of others is introduced. Species organize themselves into genera of all sizes. The size of a genus on average grows linearly with its age,…
We analyze several florae (collections of plant species populating specific areas) in different geographic and climatic regions. For every list of species we produce a taxonomic classification tree and we consider its statistical…
The impact of environmental fluctuation on species diversity is studied with a model of the evolutionary ecology of microorganisms. We show that environmental fluctuation induces evolutionary branching and assures the consequential…
Ecological communities with many species can be classified into dynamical phases. In systems with all-to-all interactions, a phase where a fixed point is always reached and a dynamically-fluctuating phase have been found. The dynamics when…
A challenge in global change biology is to predict how species will respond to future environmental change and to manage these responses. To make such predictions and management actions robust to novel futures, we need to accurately…
Populations of species in ecosystems are often constrained by availability of resources within their environment. In effect this means that a growth of one population, needs to be balanced by comparable reduction in populations of others.…
The statistical properties of an ecosystem composed of species interacting via pairwise, random interactions and deterministic, concentration limiting self-interaction are studied analytically with tools of equilibrium statistical mechanics…
In a complex system, the individual components are neither so tightly coupled or correlated that they can all be treated as a single unit, nor so uncorrelated that they can be approximated as independent entities. Instead, patterns of…
A review of the mechanisms of speciation is performed. The mechanisms of the evolution of species, taking into account the feedback of the state of the environment and mechanisms of the emergence of complexity, are considered. It is shown…
Several formulations are describing the pattern of species-area relationship, log-log linear, semi-log linear, among others. These patterns mainly explain the species-area relationship for large areas, and for the small area, they provide…
Species complexes are groups of closely related populations exchanging genes through dispersal. We study the dynamics of the structure of species complexes in a class of metapopulation models where demes can exchange genetic material…
Ecological systems show a variety of characteristic patterns of biodiversity in space and time. It is a challenge for theory to find models that can reproduce and explain the observed patterns. Since the advent of island biogeography these…
Tipping points are one of the hot topics in modern physics of complex systems. But what is a tipping point? A generic definition declares it as ``a state of the system where a small change in its parameters can lead to a significant change…
Species' interactions are shaped by their traits. Thus, we expect traits -- in particular, trait (dis)similarity -- to play a central role in determining whether a particular set of species coexists. Traits are, in turn, the outcome of an…
Extensive research shows that more species-rich assemblages are generally more productive and efficient in resource use than comparable assemblages with fewer species. But the question of how diversity simultaneously affects the wide…
A theory of relative species abundance on sparsely-connected networks is presented by investigating the replicator dynamics with symmetric interactions. Sparseness of a network involves difficulty in analyzing the fixed points of the…
In this paper we consider a microscopic model of a simple ecosystem. The basic ingredients of this model are individuals, and both the phenotypic and genotypic levels are taken in account. The model is based on a long range cellular…
Interpretation of empirical results based on a taxa's lifetime distribution shows apparently conflicting results. Species' lifetime is reported to be exponentially distributed, whereas higher order taxa, such as families or genera, follow a…