Spirals and coarsening patterns in the competition of many species: a complex Ginzburg-Landau approach

In order to model real ecological systems one has to consider many species that interact in complex ways. However, most of the recent theoretical studies have been restricted to few species systems with rather trivial interactions. The few studies dealing with larger number of species and/or more complex interaction schemes are mostly restricted to numerical explorations. In this paper we determine, starting from the deterministic mean-field rate equations, for large classes of systems the space of coexistence fixed points at which biodiversity is maximal. For systems with a single coexistence fixed point we derive complex Ginzburg-Landau equations that allow to describe space-time pattern realized in two space dimensions. For selected cases we compare the theoretical predictions with the pattern observed in numerical simulations.