Related papers: On Species Persistence-Time Distributions
Frequency-dependent selection reflects the interaction between different species as they battle for limited resources in their environment. In a stochastic evolutionary game the species relative fitnesses guides the evolutionary dynamics…
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…
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…
Mathematical modelling of the evolution of the size-spectrum dynamics in aquatic ecosystems was discovered to be a powerful tool to have a deeper insight into impacts of human- and environmental driven changes on the marine ecosystem. In…
How large ecosystems can create and maintain the remarkable biodiversity we see in nature is probably one of the biggest open questions in science, attracting attention from different fields, from Theoretical Ecology to Mathematics and…
We study the statistics of ecosystems with a variable number of co-evolving species. The species interact in two ways: by prey-predator relationships and by direct competition with similar kinds. The interaction coefficients change slowly…
We present novel analytical results about ecosystem species diversity that stem from a proposed coarse grained neutral model based on birth-death processes. The relevance of the problem lies in the urgency for understanding and synthesizing…
Natural ecosystems, in particular on the microbial scale, are inhabited by a large number of species. The population size of each species is affected by interactions of individuals with each other and by spatial and temporal changes in…
Ecological systems comprise an astonishing diversity of species that cooperate or compete with each other forming complex mutual dependencies. The minimum requirements to maintain a large species diversity on long time scales are in general…
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…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…
A new model ecosystem consisting of many interacting species is introduced. The species are connected through a random matrix with a given connectivity. It is shown that the system is organized close to a boundary of marginal stability in…
We propose a model of multispecies populations surviving on distributed resources. System dynamics are investigated under changes in abiotic factors such as the climate, as parameterized through environmental temperature. In particular, we…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…
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…
Understanding the assembly of ecosystems to estimate the number of species at different spatial scales is a challenging problem. Until now, maximum entropy approaches have lacked the important feature of considering space in an explicit…
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 numerical results based on a simplified ecological system in evolution, showing features of extinction similar to that claimed for the biosystem on Earth. In the model each species consists of a population in interaction with the…
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…
Understanding the relationship between complexity and stability in large dynamical systems -- such as ecosystems -- remains a key open question in complexity theory which has inspired a rich body of work developed over more than fifty…