Related papers: Interspecific competition shapes the structural st…
Relations among species in ecosystems can be represented by complex networks where both negative (competition) and positive (mutualism) interactions are concurrently present. Recently, it has been shown that many ecosystems can be cast into…
The role of species interactions in controlling the interplay between the stability of an ecosystem and its biodiversity is still not well understood. The ability of ecological communities to recover after a small perturbation of the…
Forty years ago, Robert May questioned a central belief in ecology by proving that sufficiently large or complex ecological networks have probability of persisting close to zero. To prove this point, he analyzed large networks in which…
The significant role of space in maintaining species coexistence and determining community structure and function is well established. However, community ecology studies have mainly focused on simple competition and predation systems, and…
In the last years, a remarkable theoretical effort has been made in order to understand stability and complexity in ecological communities. The non-random structures of real ecological interaction networks has been recognized as one key…
The architecture of bipartite networks linking two classes of constituents is affected by the interactions within each class. For the bipartite networks representing the mutualistic relationship between pollinating animals and plants, it…
Mutualistic networks are formed when the interactions between two classes of species are mutually beneficial. They are important examples of cooperation shaped by evolution. Mutualism between animals and plants plays a key role in the…
Mutualisms are key for structuring ecological communities, but they are sensitive to environmental change and fluctuations in population size. Consequently, how mutualisms achieve stability remains an open question in ecological theory.…
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…
Mutualistic interactions, which are beneficial for both interacting species, are recurrently present in ecosystems. Observations of natural systems showed that, if we draw mutualistic relationships as binary links between species, the…
The discourse surrounding the structural organization of mutualistic interactions mostly revolves around modularity and nestedness. The former is known to enhance the stability of communities, while the latter is related to their…
Understanding the architectural subtleties of ecological networks, believed to confer them enhanced stability and robustness, is a subject of outmost relevance. Mutualistic interactions have been profusely studied and their corresponding…
Ecological networks exhibit non-random structural patterns, such as modularity and nestedness, which indicate ecosystem stability, species diversity, and connectance. Such structure-stability relationships are well known. However, another…
Mays celebrated theoretical work of the 70s contradicted the established paradigm by demonstrating that complexity leads to instability in biological systems. Here Mays random-matrix modelling approach is generalized to realistic…
Individual species may experience diverse outcomes, from prosperity to extinction, in an ecological community subject to external and internal variations. Despite the wealth of theoretical results derived from random matrix ensembles, a…
Mutualistic interactions are vital constituents of ecological and socio-economic systems. Empirical studies have found that the patterns of reciprocal relations among the participants often shows the salient features of being simultaneously…
This is the first of two papers where we discuss the limits imposed by competition to the biodiversity of species communities. In this first paper we study the coexistence of competing species at the fixed point of population dynamic…
How large ecosystems can create and maintain the remarkable biodiversity we see in nature is probably one of the biggest open questions in science, attracting attention from different fields, from Theoretical Ecology to Mathematics and…
The far-reaching consequences of ecological interactions in the dynamics of biological communities remain an intriguing subject. For decades, competition has been a cornerstone in ecological processes, but mounting evidence shows that…
Mutualistic interactions, where species interact to obtain mutual benefits, constitute an essential component of natural ecosystems. The use of ecological networks to represent the species and their ecological interactions allows the study…