Related papers: Nutrient levels and trade-offs control diversity i…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
We propose a model of multispecies populations surviving on distributed resources. System dynamics are investigated under changes in abiotic factors such as the climate, as parameterized through environmental temperature. In particular, we…
All life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce. Despite expected pressure to evolve a simple system with the fastest replication speed, the mechanism by which…
This is the second of two papers dedicated to the relationship between population models of competition and biodiversity. Here we consider species assembly models where the population dynamics is kept far from fixed points through the…
The biological requirements for an ecosystem to develop and maintain species diversity are in general unknown. Here we consider a model ecosystem of sessile and mutually excluding organisms competing for space [Mathiesen et al. Phys. Rev.…
Microbes require several complex organic molecules for growth. A species may obtain a required factor by taking up molecules released by other species or by synthesizing the molecule. The patterns of uptake and synthesis set a flow of…
A recent paper by James et al. finds that mutualistic interactions decrease the biodiversity of model ecosystems. However, this result can be reverted if we consider ecological trade-offs and choose parameters suitable for sparse…
The commonly observed negative correlation between the number of species in an ecological community and disease risk, typically referred to as "the dilution effect", has received a substantial amount of attention over the past decade.…
Cell reproduction involves replication of diverse molecule species, in contrast to simple replication system with fewer components. Here, we address why such diversity is sustained despite the efficiency of simple replication systems, using…
Similarity of competitors has been proposed to facilitate coexistence of species because it slows down competitive exclusion, thus making it easier for equalizing mechanisms to maintain diverse communities. On the other hand, chaos can…
Life-history tradeoffs among species are major drivers of community assembly. Most studies investigate how tradeoffs promote deterministic coexistence of species. It remains unclear how tradeoffs may instead promote historically contingent…
Structure, composition and stability of ecological populations are shaped by the inter- and intra-species interactions within these communities. It remains to be fully understood how the interplay of these interactions with other factors,…
Ecological systems are complex dynamical systems. Modelling efforts on ecosystems' dynamical stability have revealed that population dynamics, being highly nonlinear, can be governed by complex fluctuations. Indeed, experimental and field…
Natural ecosystems, in particular on the microbial scale, are inhabited by a large number of species. The population size of each species is affected by interactions of individuals with each other and by spatial and temporal changes 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…
We analyze the joint effect of contaminants and nutrient loading on population dynamics of marine food chains by means of bifurcation analysis. Contaminant toxicity is assumed to alter mortality of some species with a sigmoidal…
Populations of species in ecosystems are often constrained by availability of resources within their environment. In effect this means that a growth of one population, needs to be balanced by comparable reduction in populations of others.…
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…
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…
The human gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem, in which hundreds of microbial species and metabolites coexist, in part due to an extensive network of cross-feeding interactions. However, both the large-scale trophic organization of this…