Related papers: Exclusion of the fittest predicts microbial commun…
In this note, we study the long time behavior of Lotka-Volterra systems whose coefficients vary randomly. Bena{\"i}m and Lobry (2015) recently established that randomly switching between two environments that are both favorable to the same…
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…
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…
We compare and contrast the long-time dynamical properties of two individual-based models of biological coevolution. Selection occurs via multispecies, stochastic population dynamics with reproduction probabilities that depend nonlinearly…
The dynamics of a two-species community of $N$ competing individuals is considered, with an emphasis on the role of environmental variations that affect coherently the fitness of entire populations. The chance of fixation of a mutant…
We present a new model for extinction in which species evolve in bursts or `avalanches', during which they become on average more susceptible to environmental stresses such as harsh climates and so are more easily rendered extinct. Results…
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…
Phase variation, or stochastic switching between alternative states of gene expression, is common among microbes, and may be important in coping with changing environments. We use a theoretical model to assess whether such switching is a…
The transient behavior of an ecosystem with N random interacting species in the presence of a multiplicative noise is analyzed. The multiplicative noise mimics the interaction with the environment. We investigate different asymptotic…
We are living in an uncertain and dynamically changing world, where optimal decision-making under uncertainty is directly linked to the survival of species. However, evolutionary selection pressures that shape value-based decision-making…
Environmental fluctuations can create population-depleted areas and even extinct areas for the population. This effect is more severe in the presence of the Allee effect (decreasing growth rate at low population densities). Dispersal inside…
We study the effects of demographic stochasticity on the long-term dynamics of biological coevolution models of community assembly. The noise is induced in order to check the validity of deterministic population dynamics. While mutualistic…
Competition between species and genotypes is a dominant factor in a variety of ecological and evolutionary processes. Biological dynamics are typically highly stochastic, and therefore, analyzing a competitive system requires accounting for…
The relationship between the dynamics of a community and its constituent pairwise interactions is a fundamental problem in ecology. Higher-order ecological effects beyond pairwise interactions may be key to complex ecosystems, but…
In microbial communities, each species often has multiple, distinct phenotypes, but studies of ecological stability have largely ignored this subpopulation structure. Here, we show that such implicit averaging over phenotypes leads to…
In contrast to the neutral population cycles of the deterministic mean-field Lotka--Volterra rate equations, including spatial structure and stochastic noise in models for predator-prey interactions yields complex spatio-temporal structures…
The intestinal microbiota plays important roles in digestion and resistance against entero-pathogens. As with other ecosystems, its species composition is resilient against small disturbances but strong perturbations such as antibiotics can…
We present a model for evolution and extinction in large ecosystems. The model incorporates the effects of interactions between species and the influences of abiotic environmental factors. We study the properties of the model by approximate…
During the last decades macroecology has identified broad-scale patterns of abundances and diversity of microbial communities and put forward some potential explanations for them. However, these advances are not paralleled by a full…
The survival of natural populations may be greatly affected by environmental conditions that vary in space and time. We look at a population residing in two locations (patches) coupled by migration, in which the local conditions fluctuate…