Related papers: Savanna dynamics with grazing, browsing, and migra…
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…
In work with a variety of co-authors, Staver and Levin have argued that savanna and forest coexist as alternative stable states with discontinuous changes in density of trees at the boundary. Here we formulate a nonhomogeneous spatial model…
Resource competition is a fundamental interaction in natural communities.However little is known about competition in spatial environments where organisms are able to regulate resource distributions. Here, we analyze the competition of two…
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…
We develop a landscape-flux framework to investigate observed frequency distributions of vegetation and the stability of these ecological systems under fluctuations. The frequency distributions can characterize the population-potential…
Destabilization of the water cycle threatens human lives and livelihoods. Meanwhile our understanding of whether and how changes in vegetation cover could trigger abrupt transitions in moisture regimes remains incomplete. This challenge…
In a wide variety of natural systems, closely-related microbial strains coexist stably, resulting in high levels of fine-scale biodiversity. However, the mechanisms that stabilize this coexistence are not fully understood. Spatial…
How do landscape fragmentation affects ecosystems diversity and stability is an important and complex question in ecology with no simple answer, as spatially separated habitats where species live are highly dynamic rather than just static.…
We present new theoretical and empirical results on the probability distributions of species persistence times in natural ecosystems. Persistence times, defined as the timespans occurring between species' colonization and local extinction…
An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…
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…
Noise and spatial degrees of freedom characterize most ecosystems. Some aspects of their influence on the coevolution of populations with cyclic interspecies competition have been demonstrated in recent experiments [e.g. B. Kerr et al.,…
The spatial dispersal of individuals is known to play an important role in the dynamics of populations, and is central to metapopulation theory. At the same time, local adaptation to environmental conditions creates a geographic mosaic of…
The relative importance of Lagrangian and population dynamics on spatial pattern formation in the distribution of plankton near the ocean's surface is investigated. Phytoplankton and zooplankton are treated as biologically interacting…
Beautiful dune patterns can be found in deserts and along coasts due to the instability of a plain sheet of sand under the action of the wind. Barchan dunes are highly mobile aeolian dunes found in areas of low sand availability and…
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…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…
Tree-grass coexistence in savanna ecosystems depends strongly on environmental disturbances out of which crucial is fire. Most modeling attempts in the literature lack stochastic approach to fire occurrences which is essential to reflect…
This thesis focuses on the applications of mathematical tools and concepts brought from nonequilibrium statistical physics to the modeling of ecological problems. The first part provides a short introduction where the theoretical concepts…
We study a mathematical model inspired by a common scenario in northern Patagonia consisting of humans and their livestock living together with native wildlife. The main production system in this area is sheep farming, which due to wrong…