Related papers: Does mutualism hinder biodiversity?
The robustness of an ecological network quantifies the resilience of the ecosystem it represents to species loss. It corresponds to the proportion of species that are disconnected from the rest of the network when extinctions occur…
The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies. Species interact not only with each other but indirectly through environmental effects, however…
We study the evolution of the network properties of a populated network embedded in a genotype space characterised by either a low or a high number of potential links, with particular emphasis on the connectivity and clustering. Evolution…
Biodiversity is essential to the viability of ecological systems. Species diversity in ecosystems is promoted by cyclic, non-hierarchical interactions among competing populations. Such non-transitive relations lead to an evolution with…
The effect of disturbance on a model ecosystem of sessile and mutually competitive species [Mathiesen et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 188101 (2011); Mitarai et al. Phys. Rev. E 86, 011929 (2012) ] is studied. The disturbance stochastically…
Nowadays, evidence is mounting that the race of living organisms for adaptation to the chemicals synthesized by their neighbours may drive community structures. Particularly, some bacterial infections and plant invasions disruptive of the…
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…
We study a version of the Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology redefined in a phenotype space where mutants have properties correlated to their parents. The model has individual-based dynamics whilst incorporating species scale…
One of the central questions of metacommunity theory is how dispersal of organisms affects species diversity. Here we show that the diversity-dispersal relationship should not be studied in isolation of other abiotic and biotic flows in the…
In mutualisms where there is exchange of resources for resources, or resources for services, the resources are typically short lived compared with the lives of the organisms that produce and make use of them. This fact allows a separation…
The impact of environmental fluctuation on species diversity is studied with a model of the evolutionary ecology of microorganisms. We show that environmental fluctuation induces evolutionary branching and assures the consequential…
Standard game theory cannot describe microbial interactions mediated by diffusible molecules. Nevertheless, we show that one can still model microbial dynamics using game theory with parameters renormalized by diffusion. Contrary to…
Current theories about mechanisms promoting species co-existence in diverse communities assume that species only interact ecologically. Species are treated as discrete evolutionary entities, even though abundant empirical evidence indicates…
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…
The decline in ecological connections signifies the potential extinction of species, which can be attributed to disruptions and alterations. The decrease in interconnections among species reflects their susceptibility to changes. For…
Genetic drift at the frontiers of two-dimensional range expansions of microorganisms can frustrate local cooperation between different genetic variants, demixing the population into distinct sectors. In a biological context, mutualistic or…
Coevolution of two species is typically thought to favour the evolution of faster evolutionary rates helping a species keep ahead in the Red Queen race, where `it takes all the running you can do to stay where you are'. In contrast, if…
Coexistence of individuals with different species or phenotypes is often found in nature in spite of competition between them. Stable coexistence of multiple types of individuals have implications for maintenance of ecological biodiversity…
Coexistence of plants depends on their competition for common resources and indirect interactions mediated by shared exploiters or mutualists. These interactions are driven either by changes in animal abundance (density-mediated…
Humans are increasingly stressing ecosystems via habitat destruction, climate change and global population movements leading to the widespread loss of biodiversity and the disruption of key ecological services. Ecosystems characterized…