Related papers: Inferring Long-term Dynamics of Ecological Communi…
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…
There has been a long debate on how new levels of organization have evolved. It might seem unlikely, as cooperation must prevail over competition. One well-studied example is the emergence of autocatalytic sets, which seem to be a…
Recent developments of eco-evolutionary models have shown that evolving feedbacks between behavioral strategies and the environment of game interactions, leading to changes in the underlying payoff matrix, can impact the underlying…
We develop a theoretical framework to understand the persistence and coexistence of competitive species in a spatially explicit metacommunity model with a heterogeneous dispersal kernel. Our analysis, based on methods from the physics of…
The internal behaviour of a population is an important feature to take account of when modelling their dynamics. In line with kin selection theory, many social species tend to cluster into distinct groups in order to enhance their overall…
We introduce the Webworld model, which links together the ecological modelling of food web structure with the evolutionary modelling of speciation and extinction events. The model describes dynamics of ecological communities on an…
Aggregated phenomena in social sciences and economics are highly dependent on the way individuals interact. To help understanding the interplay between socio-economic activities and underlying social networks, this paper studies a…
How ecosystems respond to environmental perturbations is a fundamental question in ecology, made especially challenging due to the strong coupling between species and their environment. Here, we introduce a theoretical framework for…
The assembly of ecological communities from a pool of species is central to ecology, but the effect of this process on properties of community interaction networks is still largely unknown. Here, we use a systematic analytical framework to…
It is well-known that population structure is a catalyst for the evolution of cooperation since individuals can reciprocate with their neighbors through local interactions defined by network structures. Previous research typically relies on…
Cooperation is a difficult proposition in the face of Darwinian selection. Those that defect have an evolutionary advantage over cooperators who should therefore die out. However, spatial structure enables cooperators to survive through the…
We show how highly-diverse ecological communities may display persistent abundance fluctuations, when interacting through resource competition and subjected to migration from a species pool. This turns out to be closely related to the ratio…
High-throughput sequencing techniques such as metagenomic and metatranscriptomic technologies allow cataloging of functional characteristics of microbial community members as well as their taxonomic identity. Such studies have found that a…
We develop an theoretical approach for predicting biodiversity in multi-dimensional niche spaces, arising due to ecological drivers such as competitive exclusion. The novelty of our approach relies on the fact that ecological niches are…
The evolution and long-term sustenance of cooperation has consistently piqued scholarly interest across the disciplines of evolutionary biology and social sciences. Previous theoretical and experimental studies on collective risk social…
Social networks play an important role in analyzing the impact of individual-level interactions on societal or economic outcomes. We model interactive decision making for a community of individuals with different traits, represented by a…
Microbial ecosystems are commonly modeled by fixed interactions between species in steady exponential growth states. However, microbes often modify their environments so strongly that they are forced out of the exponential state into…
As cities grow, certain neighborhoods experience a particularly high demand for housing, resulting in escalating rents. Despite far-reaching socioeconomic consequences, it remains difficult to predict when and where urban neighborhoods will…
Animals use various processes to inform themselves about their environment and make decisions about how to move and form their territory. In some cases, populations inform themselves of competing groups through observations at distances,…
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…