Related papers: Does mutualism hinder biodiversity?
Real-world systems are characterized by complex interactions of their internal degrees of freedom, while living in ever-changing environments whose net effect is to act as additional couplings. Here, we introduce a paradigmatic interacting…
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…
The persistence of biodiversity of species is a challenging proposition in ecological communities in the face of Darwinian selection. The present article investigates beyond the pairwise competitive interactions and provides a novel…
Anthropisation and excessive hunting in tropical forests threaten biodiversity, ecosystem maintenance and human food security. In this article, we focus on the issue of coexistence between humans and wildlife in an anthropised environment.…
Dispersal networks critically shape the fate of ecological communities, yet the mechanisms linking connectivity and persistence remain poorly understood. We show that an interplay between asymmetric dispersal and asynchronous dynamics…
Predators often consume multiple prey and by mutually subsidizing a shared predator, the prey may reciprocally harm each other. When predation levels are high, this apparent competition can culminate in a prey species being displaced.…
Ecological models traditionally explain stability and coexistence through pairwise interactions among species. These interactions can also involve groups of three or more species, higher-order interactions, which recent theory suggests can…
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…
People tend to have their social interactions with members of their own community. Such group-structured interactions can have a profound impact on the behaviors that evolve. Group structure affects the way people cooperate, and how they…
Ecological selection is a major driver of community assembly. Selection is classified as stabilizing when species with intermediate trait values gain the highest reproductive success, whereas selection is considered directional when fitness…
Contemporary Niche Theory is a useful framework for understanding how organisms interact with each other and with their shared environment. Its graphical representation, popularized by Tilman's Resource Ratio Hypothesis, facilitates the…
The rise in online social networking has brought about a revolution in social relations. However, its effects on offline interactions and its implications for collective well-being are still not clear and are under-investigated. We study…
The evolution of cooperation in networked systems helps to understand the dynamics in social networks, multi-agent systems, and biological species. The self-persistence of individual strategies is common in real-world decision making. The…
A central concern of community ecology is the interdependence between interaction strengths and the underlying structure of the network upon which species interact. In this work we present a solvable example of such a feedback mechanism in…
Biological and social systems are structured at multiple scales, and the incentives of individuals who interact in a group may diverge from the collective incentive of the group as a whole. Mechanisms to resolve this tension are responsible…
Mutually beneficial interactions between plant and pollinators play an essential role in the biodiversity, stability of the ecosystem and crop production. Despite their immense importance, rapid decline events of pollinators are common…
Persistent economic competition is often justified as a mechanism of innovation, efficiency, and welfare maximization. Yet empirical evidence across disciplines reveals that competition systematically generates fragility, inequality, and…
An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…
We consider the effect of network structure on the evolution of a population. Models of this kind typically consider a population of fixed size and distribution. Here we consider eco-evolutionary dynamics where population size and…
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…