Related papers: Intraspecific competition in models for vegetation…
Spatial patterns arising spontaneously due to internal processes are ubiquitous in nature, varying from regular patterns of dryland vegetation to complex structures of bacterial colonies. Many of these patterns can be explained in the…
Resource competition in heterogeneous environments is still an unresolved problem of theoretical ecology. In this article I analyze competition between two phytoplankton species in a deep water column, where the distributions of main…
Differential diffusion is a source of instability in population dynamics systems when species diffuse with different rates. Predator-prey systems show this instability only under certain specific conditions, usually requiring Holling-type…
Understanding the mechanisms that govern species coexistence and biodiversity represents a fundamental challenge in ecology. This study extends the classic rock-paper-scissors model by introducing a context-dependent higher-order…
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…
Patterns in a semiarid ecosystem are important because they directly and indirectly affect ecological processes, biodiversity, and ecosystem resilience. Understanding the causes and effects of these patterns is critical for long-term land…
We investigate the problem of speciation and coexistence in simple ecosystems when the competition among individuals is included in the Eigen model for quasi-species. By suggesting an analogy between the competition among strains and the…
Apparent competition is an indirect interaction between species that share natural resources without any mutual aggression but negatively affect each other if there is a common enemy. The negative results of the apparent competition are…
Explaining how competing species coexist remains a central question in ecology. The well-known competitive exclusion principle (CEP) states that two species competing for the same resource cannot stably coexist, and more generally, that the…
We introduce and analyze a spatial Lotka-Volterra competition model with local and nonlocal interactions. We study two alternative classes of nonlocal competition that differ in how each species' characteristics determine the range of the…
Trait variation and similarity among coexisting species can provide a window into the mechanisms that maintain their coexistence. Recent theoretical explorations suggest that competitive interactions will lead to groups, or clusters, of…
Phenotypic heterogeneity is a strategy commonly used by bacteria to rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions. Here, we study the interplay between phenotypic heterogeneity and genetic diversity in spatially extended populations.…
In apparent contradiction to competition theory, the number of known, co-existing plankton species far exceeds their explicable biodiversity - a discrepancy termed the Paradox of the Plankton. We introduce a new game-theoretic model for…
Ecological systems comprise an astonishing diversity of species that cooperate or compete with each other forming complex mutual dependencies. The minimum requirements to maintain a large species diversity on long time scales are in general…
Competition is a major force in structuring ecological communities. The strength of competition can be measured using the concept of a niche. A niche comprises the set of requirements of an organism in terms of habitat, environment and…
We develop a model for investigating the impact of rainstorm variability on the formation of banded vegetation patterns in dryland ecosystems. Water input, during rare rainstorms, is modeled as an instantaneous kick to the soil water. The…
We study a model ecosystem by means of dynamical techniques from disordered systems theory. The model describes a set of species subject to competitive interactions through a background of resources, which they feed upon. Additionally…
The persistence of biodiversity of species is a challenging proposition in ecological communities in the face of Darwinian selection. The present article investigates beyond the pairwise competitive interactions and provides a novel…
We investigate the effects of spatial heterogeneity on the coexistence of competing species in the case when the heterogeneity is dynamically generated by environmental flows with chaotic mixing properties. We show that one of the effects…
We analyze a spatially extended version of a well-known model of forest-savanna dynamics, which presents as a system of nonlinear partial integro-differential equations, and study necessary conditions for pattern-forming bifurcations.…