Related papers: Linking evolutionary and ecological theory illumin…
One of the first successes of neutral ecology was to predict realistically-broad distributions of rare and abundant species. However, it has remained an outstanding theoretical challenge to describe how this distribution of abundances…
We introduce a comprehensive analytical benchmark, relying on Fokker-Planck formalism, to study microbial dynamics in presence of both biotic and abiotic forces. In equilibrium, we observe a balance between the two kinds of forces, leading…
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…
Ecosystems are commonly conceptualized as networks of interacting species. However, partitioning natural diversity of organisms into discrete units is notoriously problematic, and mounting experimental evidence raises the intriguing…
We investigate the formation of stable ecological networks where many species share the same resource. We show that such stable ecosystem naturally occurs as a result of extinctions. We obtain an analytical relation for the number of…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
Several theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain observed biodiversity patterns, ranging from the classical niche-based theories, mainly employing a continuous formalism, to neutral theories, based on statistical mechanics of…
Ecology and evolution are inseparable. Motivated by some recent experiments, we have developed models of evolutionary ecology from the perspective of dynamic networks. In these models, in addition to the intra-node dynamics, which…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…
The coupling between evolutionary and ecological changes (eco-evolutionary dynamics) has been shown to be relevant among diverse species, and is also of interest outside of ecology, i.e. in cancer evolution. These dynamics play an important…
Species coexistence is one of the central themes in modern ecology. Coexistence is a prerequisite of biological diversity. However, the question arises how biodiversity can be reconciled with the statement of competition theory, which…
Complementarity among species with different traits is one of the basic processes affecting biodiversity, defined as the number of species in the ecosystem. We present here a soluble model ecosystem in which the species are characterized by…
When can complex ecological interactions drive an entire ecosystem into a persistent non-equilibrium state, where species abundances keep fluctuating without going to extinction? We show that high-diversity spatially-extended systems, in…
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…
We present new theoretical and empirical results on the probability distributions of species persistence times in natural ecosystems. Persistence times, defined as the timespans occurring between species' colonization and local extinction…
A key goal in studies of ecology and evolution is understanding the causes of phenotypic diversity in nature. Most traits of interest, such as those relating to morphology, life-history, immunity and behaviour are quantitative, and…
Apparent biodiversity on earth exists only if we compare different species separated from their environments. Meanwhile coexisting species have to be identical in terms of energetic interactions. Consider the biosphere as a network of…
Macroevolution is considered as a problem of stochastic dynamics in a system with many competing agents. Evolutionary events (speciations and extinctions) are triggered by fitness records found by random exploration of the agents' fitness…
We study the statistics of ecosystems with a variable number of co-evolving species. The species interact in two ways: by prey-predator relationships and by direct competition with similar kinds. The interaction coefficients change slowly…
The observation that phenotypic variability is ubiquitous in isogenic populations has led to a multitude of experimental and theoretical studies seeking to probe the causes and consequences of this variability. Whether it be in the context…