Related papers: Ecosystem-level stabilizing effects of biodiversit…
Environmental stochasticity is known to be a destabilizing factor, increasing abundance fluctuations and extinction rates of populations. However, the stability of a community may benefit from the differential response of species to…
We analyze plankton-nutrient food chain models composed of phytoplankton, herbivorous zooplankton and a limiting nutrient. These models have played a key role in understanding the dynamics of plankton in the oceanic layer. Given the strong…
Microbial communities feature an immense diversity of species and this diversity is linked with outcomes ranging from ecosystem stability to medical prognoses. Yet the mechanisms underlying microbial diversity are under debate. While simple…
The emergence and impact of tipping points have garnered significant interest in both the social and natural sciences. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of feedbacks between human and natural systems, it is often assumed that…
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…
Extensive research shows that more species-rich assemblages are generally more productive and efficient in resource use than comparable assemblages with fewer species. But the question of how diversity simultaneously affects the wide…
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…
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…
In the subtropical gyres, phytoplankton rely on eddies for transporting nutrients from depth to the euphotic zone. But, what controls the rate of nutrient supply for new production? We show that vertical nutrient flux depends both on the…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
Biodiversity loss driven by agricultural intensification is a pressing global issue, with significant implications for ecosystem stability and human well-being. Existing policy instruments have so far proven insufficient in halting this…
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…
Nutrient-Phytoplankton-Zooplankton-Detritus (NPZD) models, describing the interactions between phytoplankton, zooplankton systems, and their ecosystem, are used to predict their ecological and evolutionary population dynamics. These…
Understanding the relationship between complexity and stability in large dynamical systems -- such as ecosystems -- remains a key open question in complexity theory which has inspired a rich body of work developed over more than fifty…
The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies. Species interact not only with each other but indirectly through environmental effects, however…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
Biodiversity widely observed in ecological systems is attributed to the dynamical balance among the competing species. The time-varying populations of the interacting species are often captured rather well by a set of deterministic…
Ecosystems are governed by dynamic processes such as competition for resources, reproduction and dispersal. These shape their biodiversity and how the system responds to change. Current approaches to modelling ecosystems, especially plants,…
A classic measure of ecological stability describes the tendency of a community to return to equilibrium after small perturbation. While many advances show how the network structure of these communities severely constrains such tendencies,…