Related papers: Coarse-Graining Cascades Within Food Webs
We propose a model based on coupled multiplicative stochastic processes to understand the dynamics of competing species in an ecosystem. This process can be conveniently described by a Fokker-Planck equation. We provide an analytical…
Spatial structure and species interactions jointly shape the dynamics and biodiversity of ecological systems, yet most theoretical models either neglect spatial heterogeneity or sacrifice analytical tractability. Here, we provide a unified…
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…
Understanding under what conditions interacting populations, whether they be plants, animals, or viral particles, coexist is a question of theoretical and practical importance in population biology. Both biotic interactions and…
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…
Ecological processes depend on the flow and balance of essential elements such as carbon (C) and phosphorus (P), and changes in these elements can cause adverse effects to ecosystems. The theory of Ecological Stoichiometry offers a…
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…
A stable population network is hard to interrupt without any ecological consequences. A communication blockage between patches may destabilize the populations in the ecological network. This work deals with the construction of a safe cut…
Quantitative population modelling is an invaluable tool for identifying the cascading effects of ecosystem management and interventions. Ecosystem models are often constructed by assuming stability and coexistence in ecological communities…
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.…
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…
Coevolving and competing species or game-theoretic strategies exhibit rich and complex dynamics for which a general theoretical framework based on finite populations is still lacking. Recently, an explicit mean-field description in the form…
Food-web perturbations stemming from climate change, overexploitation, invasive species, and habitat degradation often cause an initial loss of species that results in a cascade of secondary extinctions, posing considerable challenges to…
Over the past century, nonlinear difference and differential equations have been used to understand conditions for species coexistence. However, these models fail to account for random fluctuations due to demographic and environmental…
Population structure can have a significant effect on evolution. For some systems with sufficient symmetry, analytic results can be derived within the mathematical framework of evolutionary graph theory which relate to the outcome of the…
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…
Food webs with intraguild predation (IGP) are widespread in natural habitats. Their adaptation and resilience behaviour is principal for understanding restructuring of ecological communities. In spite of the importance of IGP food webs…
Frequency dependent selection and demographic fluctuations play important roles in evolutionary and ecological processes. Under frequency dependent selection, the average fitness of the population may increase or decrease based on…
Tipping points have been shown to be ubiquitous, both in models and empirically in a range of physical and biological systems. The question of how tipping points cascade through systems has been less well studied and is an important one. A…
The presence of one or more species at some spatial locations but not others is a central matter in ecology. This phenomenon is related to ecological pattern formation. Nonlocal interactions can be considered as one of the mechanisms…