Related papers: Competition between phytoplankton and bacteria: ex…
We present properties of Lotka-Volterra equations describing ecological competition among a large number of competing species. First we extend to the case of a non-homogeneous niche space stability conditions for solutions representing…
A fundamental problem in evolutionary ecology research is to explain how different species coexist in natural ecosystems. This question is directly related with species trophic competition. However, competition theory, based on the…
Competition between individuals drives the evolution of whole species. Although the fittest individuals survive the longest and produce the most offspring, in some circumstances the resulting species may not be optimally fit. Here, using…
Explaining biodiversity is a central focus in theoretical ecology. A significant obstacle arises from the Competitive Exclusion Principle (CEP), which states that two species competing for the same type of resources cannot coexist at…
The competitive exclusion principle in epidemiology implies that when competing strains of a pathogen provide complete protection for each other, the strain with the largest reproduction number outcompetes the other strains and drives them…
Classical understanding of the outcome of the struggle for existence results in the Darwinian survival of the fittest. Here we show that the situation may be different, more complex and arguably more interesting. Specifically, we show that…
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…
Explaining how competing species coexist remains a central question in ecology. The well-known competitive exclusion principle (CEP) states that two species competing for the same resource cannot stably coexist, and more generally, that the…
The competitive exclusion principle asserts that coexisting species must occupy distinct ecological niches (i.e. the number of surviving species can not exceed the number of resources). An open question is to understand if and how different…
This study investigates the role of spatial segregation, prompted by competition avoidance, as a key mechanism for emergent coexistence within microbial communities. Recognizing these communities as complex adaptive systems, we challenge…
We demonstrate diversification rather than optimisation for highly interacting organisms in a well mixed biological system by means of a simple model and reference to experiment, and find the cause to be the complex network of interactions…
Ecosystems are commonly organized into trophic levels -- organisms that occupy the same level in a food chain (e.g., plants, herbivores, carnivores). A fundamental question in theoretical ecology is how the interplay between trophic…
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…
Mixed microbial communities, usually composed of various bacterial and fungal species, are fundamental in a plethora of environments, from soil to human gut and skin. Their evolution is a paradigmatic example of intertwined dynamics, where…
Explaining biodiversity is a fundamental issue in ecology. A long-standing puzzle lies in the paradox of the plankton: many species of plankton feeding on a limited variety of resources coexist, apparently flouting the competitive exclusion…
Monod's model describes the growth of microorganisms using a hyperbolic function of extracellular resource concentration. Under fluctuating or limited resource concentrations this model performs poorly against experimental data, motivating…
There is a pressing need to better understand how microbial populations respond to antimicrobial drugs, and to find mechanisms to possibly eradicate antimicrobial-resistant cells. The inactivation of antimicrobials by resistant microbes can…
We give an new proof of the well-known competitive exclusion principle in the chemostat model with $n$ species competing for a single resource, for any set of increasing growth functions. The proof is constructed by induction on the number…
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…
This paper studies a two microbial species model in competition for a single resource in the chemostat including general interspecific density-dependent growth rates with distinct removal rates for each species. We give the necessary and…