Related papers: Reconciling cooperation, biodiversity and stabilit…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…
Quantitative population modelling is an invaluable tool for identifying the cascading effects of ecosystem management and interventions. Ecosystem models are often constructed by assuming stability and coexistence in ecological communities…
It is well-established that including spatial structure and stochastic noise in models for predator-prey interactions invalidates the classical deterministic Lotka-Volterra picture of neutral population cycles. In contrast, stochastic…
We explore the complex dynamical behavior of two simple predator-prey models of biological coevolution that on the ecological level account for interspecific and intraspecific competition, as well as adaptive foraging behavior. The…
Mutualistic communities have an internal structure that makes them resilient to external per- turbations. Late research has focused on their stability and the topology of the relations between the different organisms to explain the reasons…
Fluctuating environments are situations where the spatio-temporal stochasticity plays a significant role in the evolutionary dynamics. The study of the evolution of cooperation in these environments typically assumes a homogeneous, well…
Evolutionary transitions among ecological interactions are widely known, although their detailed dynamics remain absent for most population models. Adaptive dynamics has been used to illustrate how the parameters of population models might…
In large clonal populations, several clones generally compete which results in complex evolutionary and ecological dynamics: experiments show successive selective sweeps of favorable mutations as well as long-term coexistence of multiple…
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits…
Analyzing coexistence and survival scenarios of Lotka-Volterra (LV) networks in which the total biomass is conserved is of vital importance for the characterization of long-term dynamics of ecological communities. Here, we introduce a…
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…
In this work we study the stability of the equilibria reached by ecosystems formed by a large number of species. The model we focus on are Lotka-Volterra equations with symmetric random interactions. Our theoretical analysis, confirmed by…
We study the equilibrium phases of a generalized Lotka-Volterra model characterized by a species interaction matrix which is random, sparse and symmetric. Dynamical fluctuations are modeled by a demographic noise with amplitude proportional…
A fundamental problem in community ecology is to understand how ecological processes such as selection, drift, and immigration give rise to observed patterns in species composition and diversity. Here, we present a simple, analytically…
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…
Explaining coexistence in species-rich communities of primary producers remains a challenge for ecologists because of their likely competition for shared resources. Following Hutchinson's seminal suggestion, many theoreticians have tried to…
We show that spatial extensions of many-species population dynamics models, such as the Lotka-Volterra model with random interactions we focus on in this work, generically exhibit scale-free correlation functions of population sizes in the…
Species coexistence is a complex, multifaceted problem. At an equilibrium, coexistence requires two conditions: stability under small perturbations; and feasibility, meaning all species abundances are positive. Which of these two conditions…
How do interactions between species influence their spatial distribution in an ecosystem? To answer this question, we introduce a spatially-extended ecosystem of Generalized Lotka-Volterra type, where species can diffuse and interactions…
The behavior of interacting populations typically displays irregular temporal and spatial patterns that are difficult to reconcile with an underlying deterministic dynamics. A classical example is the heterogeneous distribution of plankton…