Related papers: Species assembly in model ecosystems, I: Analysis …
In the companion paper of this set (Capitan and Cuesta, 2010) we have developed a full analytical treatment of the model of species assembly introduced in Capitan et al. (2009). This model is based on the construction of an assembly graph…
We introduce a toy model of ecosystem assembly for which we are able to map out all assembly pathways generated by external invasions. The model allows to display the whole phase space in the form of an assembly graph whose nodes are…
This is the second of two papers dedicated to the relationship between population models of competition and biodiversity. Here we consider species assembly models where the population dynamics is kept far from fixed points through the…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
To understand the mechanisms underlying species coexistence, ecologists often study invasion growth rates of theoretical and data-driven models. These growth rates correspond to average per-capita growth rates of one species with respect to…
Predicting the outcomes of species invasions is a central goal of ecology, a task made especially challenging due to ecological feedbacks. To address this, we develop a general theory of ecological invasions applicable to a wide variety of…
We propose a minimal model of the dynamics of diversity -- replicator equations with extinction, invasion and mutation. We numerically study the behavior of this simple model and show that it displays completely different behavior from the…
A fundamental problem in community ecology is to understand how ecological processes such as selection, drift, and immigration give rise to observed patterns in species composition and diversity. Here, we present a simple, analytically…
The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies. Species interact not only with each other but indirectly through environmental effects, however…
In this paper, we study a special case of the invasion fitness matrix in a replicator equation: the invader-driven case. In this replicator, each species is defined by its unique active invasiveness potential (initial growth rate when…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
Population structure can have a significant effect on evolution. For some systems with sufficient symmetry, analytic results can be derived within the mathematical framework of evolutionary graph theory which relate to the outcome of the…
The spatial structure of populations is a key element in the understanding of the large scale spreading of epidemics. Motivated by the recent empirical evidence on the heterogeneous properties of transportation and commuting patterns among…
Species-rich communities, such as the microbiota or microbial ecosystems, provide key functions for human health and climatic resilience. Increasing effort is being dedicated to design experimental protocols for selecting community-level…
Quantifying population dynamics is a fundamental challenge in ecology and evolutionary biology, particularly for species that are cryptic, microscopic, or extinct. Traditional approaches rely on continuous representations of population…
We introduce the Webworld model, which links together the ecological modelling of food web structure with the evolutionary modelling of speciation and extinction events. The model describes dynamics of ecological communities on an…
An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…
For years, a main focus of ecological research has been to better understand the complex dynamical interactions between species which comprise food webs. Using the connectance properties of a widely explored synthetic food web called the…
We study a dynamic model of ecosystems where immigration plays an essential role both in assembling the species community and in mantaining its biodiversity. This framework is particularly relevant for insular ecosystems. Population…