Related papers: Stability Criteria for Complex Ecosystems
According to the May-Wigner stability theorem, increasing the complexity of a network inevitably leads to its destabilization, such that a small perturbation will be able to disrupt the entire system. One of the principal arguments against…
We perform individual-based Monte Carlo simulations in a community consisting of two predator species competing for a single prey species, with the purpose of studying biodiversity stabilization in this simple model system. Predators are…
Will a large economy be stable? Building on Robert May's original argument for large ecosystems, we conjecture that evolutionary and behavioural forces conspire to drive the economy towards marginal stability. We study networks of firms in…
Relations among species in ecosystems can be represented by complex networks where both negative (competition) and positive (mutualism) interactions are concurrently present. Recently, it has been shown that many ecosystems can be cast into…
Individuals within any species exhibit differences in size, developmental state, or spatial location. These differences coupled with environmental fluctuations in demographic rates can have subtle effects on population persistence and…
We develop a set of equations to describe the population dynamics of many interacting species in food webs. Predator-prey interactions are non-linear, and are based on ratio-dependent functional responses. The equations account for…
Mutualistic networks are formed when the interactions between two classes of species are mutually beneficial. They are important examples of cooperation shaped by evolution. Mutualism between animals and plants plays a key role in the…
We study an individual-based predator-prey model of biological coevolution, using linear stability analysis and large-scale kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The model exhibits approximate 1/f noise in diversity and population-size…
We consider a random network of nonlinear maps exhibiting a wide range of local dynamics, with the links having normally distributed interaction strengths. The stability of such a system is examined in terms of the asymptotic fraction of…
Understanding the influence of structure of dispersal network on the species persistence and modeling a much realistic species dispersal in nature are two central issues in spatial ecology. A realistic dispersal structure which favors the…
In this paper, we examine both stability and sustainability of a network-based model of natural resource consumption. Stability is studied from a dynamical systems perspective, though we argue that sustainability is a fundamentally…
Simulations of the coevolution of many interacting species are performed using the Webworld model. The model has a realistic set of predator-prey equations that describe the population dynamics of the species for any structure of the food…
We study species abundance in the empirical plant-pollinator mutualistic networks exhibiting broad degree distributions, with uniform intra-group competition assumed, by the Lotka-Volterra equation. The stability of a fixed point is found…
We performed a stability analysis of 119 quantitative food webs which were compiled using a standard methodology to build Ecopath mass-balance models. Our analysis reveals that classic descriptors of complexity do not affect stability in…
In natural ecosystems, species can be characterized by the nonlinear density-dependent self-regulation of their growth profile. Species of many taxa show a substantial density-dependent reduction for low population size. Nevertheless, many…
We study the phenomenon of multistability in mutualistic networks of plants and pollinators, where one desired state in which all species coexist competes with multiple states in which some species are gone extinct. In this setting, we…
Stability is a desirable property of complex ecosystems. If a community of interacting species is at a stable equilibrium point then it is able to withstand small perturbations to component species' abundances without suffering adverse…
A detailed analysis of three species-rich ecosystem food webs has shown that they display scale-free distributions of connections. Such graphs of interaction are in fact shared by a number of biological and technological networks, which…
Microbial communities routinely have several possible species compositions or community states observed for the same environmental parameters. Changes in these parameters can trigger abrupt and persistent transitions (regime shifts) between…
The stability of ecological systems is a fundamental concept in ecology, which offers profound insights into species coexistence, biodiversity, and community persistence. In this article, we provide a systematic and comprehensive review on…