Related papers: Ecosystem knowledge should replace coexistence and…
We propose a model of multispecies populations surviving on distributed resources. System dynamics are investigated under changes in abiotic factors such as the climate, as parameterized through environmental temperature. In particular, we…
Effective intervention strategies for epidemics rely on the identification of their origin and on the robustness of the predictions made by network disease models. We introduce a Bayesian uncertainty quantification framework to infer model…
Mathematical models connect theory with the real world through data, enabling us to interpret, understand, and predict complex phenomena. However, scientific knowledge often extends beyond what can be empirically measured, offering valuable…
Abundance data are used in ecology for species monitoring and conservation. These count data often display several specific characteristics like numerous missing data, high variance, and a high proportion of zeros, particularly when…
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…
Accurate biodiversity monitoring is essential for effective environmental policy, yet current practices often rely on arbitrarily defined ecosystems, communities, and ad-hoc indicator species, limiting cost-efficiency and reproducibility.…
Ecological systems are emergent features of ecological and adaptive dynamics of a community of interacting species. By natural selection through the abiotic environment and by co-adaptation within the community, species evolve, thereby…
Ecological networks describe the interactions between different species, informing us of how they rely on one another for food, pollination and survival. If a species in an ecosystem is under threat of extinction, it can affect other…
Local coexistence of species in large ecosystems is traditionally explained within the broad framework of niche theory. However, its rationale hardly justifies rich biodiversity observed in nearly homogeneous environments. Here we consider…
Identifying undocumented or potential future interactions among species is a challenge facing modern ecologists. Recent link prediction methods rely on trait data, however large species interaction databases are typically sparse and…
The abundance of a species' population in an ecosystem is rarely stationary, often exhibiting large fluctuations over time. Using historical data on marine species, we show that the year-to-year fluctuations of population growth rate obey a…
We discuss the relevance of studying ecology within the framework of Complexity Science from a statistical mechanics approach. Ecology is concerned with understanding how systems level properties emerge out of the multitude of interactions…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
A fundamental challenge in developing data-driven approaches to ecological systems for tasks such as state estimation and prediction is the paucity of the observational or measurement data. For example, modern machine-learning techniques…
Population dynamics in random ecological networks are investigated by analyzing a simple deterministic equation. It is found that a sequence of abrupt changes of populations punctuating quiescent states characterize the long time behavior.…
Increasing pressures on the environment are generating an ever-increasing need to manage animal and plant populations sustainably, and to protect and rebuild endangered populations. Effective management requires reliable mathematical…
We investigate the formation of stable ecological networks where many species share the same resource. We show that such stable ecosystem naturally occurs as a result of extinctions. We obtain an analytical relation for the number of…
May (1974,1976) opened the debate on whether biological populations might exhibit nonlinear dynamics and chaos. However, it has in general been difficult to verify nonlinear dynamics in biological populations. There are many reports…
A number of authors have in recent years proposed that the processes of macroevolution may give rise to self-organized critical phenomena which could have a significant effect on the dynamics of ecosystems. In particular it has been…
Several theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain observed biodiversity patterns, ranging from the classical niche-based theories, mainly employing a continuous formalism, to neutral theories, based on statistical mechanics of…