Related papers: Community-level cohesion without cooperation

The maintenance of diversity, the `commonness of rarity', and compositional turnover are ubiquitous features of species-rich communities. Through a minimal model, we consider how these features reflect the interplay between environmental…

In social-ecological systems (SESs), social and biophysical dynamics interact within and between structural levels separated by spatial and temporal scales. Cross-scale interactions (CSIs) are interdependences between processes at different…

In studies of social dynamics, cohesion refers to a group's tendency to stay in unity, which -- as argued in sociometry -- arises from the network topology of interpersonal ties between members of the group. We follow this idea and propose…

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…

Species interactions through cross-feeding via leakage and uptake of chemicals are important in microbial communities, and play an essential role in the coexistence of diverse species. Here, we study a simple dynamical model of a microbial…

We investigate the effect of randomness in both relationships and decisions on the evolution of cooperation. Simulation results show, in such randomness' presence, the system evolves to a more frequency cooperation state than in its…

Many complex adaptive systems contain a large diversity of specialized components. The specialization at the level of the microscopic degrees of freedom, and diversity at the level of the system as a whole are phenomena that appear during…

Metapopulation models have been instrumental in demonstrating the ecological impact of landscape structure on the survival of a focal species in complex environments. However, extensions to multiple species with arbitrary dispersal networks…

Microbes providing public goods are widespread in nature despite running the risk of being exploited by free-riders. However, the precise ecological factors supporting cooperation are still puzzling. Following recent experiments, we…

Social mobilization often fails not for a lack of collective interest, but because of fierce competition between rival movements for the same limited pool of participants. We generalize the classic threshold model of collective behavior to…

Coevolutionary dynamics is investigated in chemical catalysis, biological evolution, social and economic systems. The dynamics of these systems can be analyzed within the unifying framework of evolutionary game theory. In this Letter, we…

In this paper I describe a cellular automaton model of a multi-species ecosystem, suitable for the study of emergent properties of macroevolution. Unlike majority of ecological models, the number of coexisting species is not fixed. Starting…

Although community detection has drawn tremendous amount of attention across the sciences in the past decades, no formal consensus has been reached on the very nature of what qualifies a community as such. In this article we take an…

Individual species may experience diverse outcomes, from prosperity to extinction, in an ecological community subject to external and internal variations. Despite the wealth of theoretical results derived from random matrix ensembles, a…

Mutualisms are key for structuring ecological communities, but they are sensitive to environmental change and fluctuations in population size. Consequently, how mutualisms achieve stability remains an open question in ecological theory.…

Social evolutionary theory seeks to explain increases in the scale and complexity of human societies, from origins to present. Over the course of the twentieth century, social evolutionary theory largely fell out of favor as a way of…

The introduction of non-native organisms into complex microbiome communities holds enormous potential to benefit society. However, microbiome engineering faces several challenges including successful establishment of the organism into the…

The assembly of ecological communities from a pool of species is central to ecology, but the effect of this process on properties of community interaction networks is still largely unknown. Here, we use a systematic analytical framework to…

Mutualistic interactions are widespread in nature, from plant communities and microbiomes to human organizations. Along with competition for resources, cooperative interactions shape biodiversity and contribute to the robustness of complex…

Exploiting others is beneficial individually but it could also be detrimental globally. The reverse is also true: a higher cooperation level may change the environment in a way that is beneficial for all competitors. To explore the possible…