Related papers: Does mutualism hinder biodiversity?
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…
James et al. (2012) presented simulations that apparently falsify the analytical result by Bastolla et al. (2009), who showed that nested mutualistic interactions decrease interspecific competition and increase biodiversity in model…
Global environmental change is affecting species distribution and their interactions with other species. In particular, the main drivers of environmental change strongly affect the strength of interspecific interactions with considerable…
Mutualistic interactions, where individuals from different species can benefit from each other, are widespread across ecosystems. This study develops a general deterministic model of mutualism involving two populations, assuming that…
In the last years, a remarkable theoretical effort has been made in order to understand stability and complexity in ecological communities. The non-random structures of real ecological interaction networks has been recognized as one key…
Mutualistic interactions, which are beneficial for both interacting species, are recurrently present in ecosystems. Observations of natural systems showed that, if we draw mutualistic relationships as binary links between species, the…
We investigate the relationship between the nested organization of mutualistic systems and their robustness against the extinction of species. We establish that a nested pattern of contacts is the best possible one as far as robustness is…
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…
Cooperative mutualism is a major force driving evolution and sustaining ecosystems. Although the importance of spatial degrees of freedom and number fluctuations is well-known, their effects on mutualism are not fully understood. With range…
Previous work has shown that species interacting in an ecosystem and actors transacting in an economic context may have notable similarities in behavior. However, the specific mechanism that may underlie similarities in nature and human…
Mutualistic networks have been shown to involve complex patterns of interactions among animal and plant species. The architecture of these webs seems to pervade some of their robust and fragile behaviour. Recent work indicates that there is…
Mutualistic networks have attracted increasing attention in the ecological literature in the last decades as they play a key role in the maintenance of biodiversity. Here, we develop an analytical framework to study the structural stability…
Mutualistic interactions are vital constituents of ecological and socio-economic systems. Empirical studies have found that the patterns of reciprocal relations among the participants often shows the salient features of being simultaneously…
Resolving the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been one of the central goals of modern ecology. Early debates about the relationship were finally resolved with the advent of a statistical partitioning scheme…
We consider the concept of mutual information in ecological networks, and use this idea to analyse the Tangled Nature model of co-evolution. We show that this measure of correlation has two distinct behaviours depending on how we define the…
We investigate how the pattern of contacts between species in mutualistic ecosystems is affected by the phylogenetic proximity between the species of each guild. We develop several theoretical tools to measure that effect and we use them to…
Ecosystems are formed by networks of species and their interactions. Traditional models of such interactions assume a constant interaction strength between a given pair of species. However, there is often significant trait variation among…
Ecological networks exhibit non-random structural patterns, such as modularity and nestedness, which indicate ecosystem stability, species diversity, and connectance. Such structure-stability relationships are well known. However, another…
Ecological systems have a high level of complexity combined with stability and rich biodiversity. Recently, the analysis of their properties and evolution has been pushed forward on a basis of concept of mutualistic networks that provides a…
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…