Related papers: Spatial effects on species persistence and implica…
Mutualistic interactions, where species interact to obtain mutual benefits, constitute an essential component of natural ecosystems. The use of ecological networks to represent the species and their ecological interactions allows the study…
Enhancement of the predictive power and robustness of nonlinear population dynamics models allows ecologists to make more reliable forecasts about species' long term survival. However, the limited availability of detailed ecological data,…
The relationship between the dynamics of a community and its constituent pairwise interactions is a fundamental problem in ecology. Higher-order ecological effects beyond pairwise interactions may be key to complex ecosystems, but…
Understanding the mechanisms of species coexistence has always been a fundamental topic in ecology. Classical theory predicts that interspecific competition may select for traits that stabilize niche differences, although recent work shows…
Discrete time, spatially extended models play an important role in ecology, modelling population dynamics of species ranging from micro-organisms to birds. An important question is how 'bottom up', individual-based models can be…
Ecological systems are complex dynamical systems. Modelling efforts on ecosystems' dynamical stability have revealed that population dynamics, being highly nonlinear, can be governed by complex fluctuations. Indeed, experimental and field…
Despite its radical assumption of ecological equivalence between species, neutral biodiversity theory can often provide good fits to species abundance distributions observed in nature. Major criticisms of neutral theory have focused on…
Traditional approaches to ecosystem modelling have relied on spatially homogeneous approximations to interaction, growth and death. More recently, spatial interaction and dispersal have also been considered. While these leads to certain…
Spatial structure and species interactions jointly shape the dynamics and biodiversity of ecological systems, yet most theoretical models either neglect spatial heterogeneity or sacrifice analytical tractability. Here, we provide a unified…
The coexistence of multiple phytoplankton species despite their reliance on similar resources is often explained with mean-field models assuming mixed populations. In reality, observations of phytoplankton indicate spatial aggregation at…
Spatially explicit models have been widely used in today's mathematical ecology and epidemiology to study persistence and extinction of populations as well as their spatial patterns. Here we extend the earlier work--static dispersal between…
The maintenance of diversity, the `commonness of rarity', and compositional turnover are ubiquitous features of species-rich communities. Through a minimal model, we consider how these features reflect the interplay between environmental…
Ecological networks describe the interactions between different species, informing us of how they rely on one another for food, pollination and survival. If a species in an ecosystem is under threat of extinction, it can affect other…
We present a model for evolution and extinction in large ecosystems. The model incorporates the effects of interactions between species and the influences of abiotic environmental factors. We study the properties of the model by approximate…
Self-organized spatial patterns of vegetation are frequent in drylands and, because pattern shape correlates with water availability, they have been suggested as important indicators of ecosystem health. However, the mechanisms underlying…
Local coexistence of species in large ecosystems is traditionally explained within the broad framework of niche theory. However, its rationale hardly justifies rich biodiversity observed in nearly homogeneous environments. Here we consider…
We describe a simple model of evolution which incorporates the branching and extinction of species lines, and also includes abiotic influences. A first principles approach is taken in which the probability for speciation and extinction are…
Understanding the patterns and processes of diversification of life in the planet is a key challenge of science. The Tree of Life represents such diversification processes through the evolutionary relationships among the different taxa, and…
Tropical rainforests exhibit a rich repertoire of spatial patterns emerging from the intricate relationship between the microscopic interaction between species. In particular, the distribution of vegetation clusters can shed much light on…
Ecology and evolution are inseparable. Motivated by some recent experiments, we have developed models of evolutionary ecology from the perspective of dynamic networks. In these models, in addition to the intra-node dynamics, which…