Related papers: Dispersal-induced instability in complex ecosystem…
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…
Does an ecological community allow stable coexistence? Identifying the general principles that determine the answer to this question is a central problem of theoretical ecology. Random matrix theory approaches have uncovered the general…
Predicting species persistence within ecological communities is a fundamental challenge for both empirical and theoretical ecology. Existing methods span from mechanistic models, whose parameters are difficult to estimate from data, to…
A commonly used approach to study stability in a complex system is by analyzing the Jacobian matrix at an equilibrium point of a dynamical system. The equilibrium point is stable if all eigenvalues have negative real parts. Here, by…
Several theoretical models predict that spatial patterning increases ecosystem resilience. However, these predictions rely on simplifying assumptions, such as assuming isotropic and infinitely large ecosystems, and empirical evidence…
We show that stability of planetary systems is intimately connected with their internal order. An arbitrary initial distribution of planets is susceptible to catastrophic events in which planets either collide or are ejected from the…
Cyclic, nonhierarchical interactions among biological species represent a general mechanism by which ecosystems are able to maintain high levels of biodiversity. However, species coexistence is often possible only in spatially extended…
Ecosystems tend to fluctuate around stable equilibria in response to internal dynamics and environmental factors. Occasionally, they enter an unstable tipping region and collapse into an alternative stable state. Our understanding of how…
Random matrix theory successfully connects the structure of interactions of large ecological communities to their ability to respond to perturbations. One of the most debated aspects of this approach is the missing role of population…
Ecological systems are studied using many different approaches and mathematical tools. One approach, based on the Jacobian of Lotka-Volterra type models, has been a staple of mathematical ecology for years, leading to many ideas such as on…
Dispersal networks critically shape the fate of ecological communities, yet the mechanisms linking connectivity and persistence remain poorly understood. We show that an interplay between asymmetric dispersal and asynchronous dynamics…
Following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, a deep analogy between the origins of instability in financial systems and complex ecosystems has been pointed out: in both cases, topological features of network structures influence how easily…
The concept of Turing instability, namely that diffusion can destabilize the uniform steady state, is well known either in the context of partial differential equations (PDEs) or in networks of dynamical systems. Recently reaction-diffusion…
Complex systems with global interactions tend to be stable if interactions between components are sufficiently homogeneous. In biological systems, which often have small copy numbers and interactions mediated by diffusing agents, noise and…
The inclusion of a fragmentation mechanism in population balance equations introduces complex interactions that make the analytical or even computational treatment much more difficult than for the pure aggregation case. This is specially…
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…
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…
Mixed dispersal syndromes have historically been regarded as bet-hedging mechanisms that enhance survival in unpredictable environments, ensuring that some propagules stay in the maternal environment while others can potentially colonize…
Complex evolving systems such as the biosphere, ecosystems and societies exhibit sudden collapses, for reasons that are only partially understood. Here we study this phenomenon using a mathematical model of a system that evolves under…
Pattern formation is ubiquitous in nature and the mechanism widely-accepted to underlay them is based on the Turing instability, predicted by Alan Turing decades ago. This is a non-trivial mechanism that involves nonlinear interaction terms…