Article
Ecology
Constantinos Xenophontos, W. Stanley Harpole, Kirsten Kuesel, Adam Thomas Clark
Summary: Cheaters in microbial communities can stabilize the community and potentially be a precursor to cooperation rather than extinction.
FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Shyamolina Ghosh, Daniel C. Reuman, James D. Bever
Summary: This study explores the co-occurrence of functionally variable symbionts within individual plant roots. The researchers find that the host's preferential allocation of resources and the costs of mutualism result in resource specialization, allowing for the coexistence of beneficial and non-beneficial symbionts. Biologically realistic models predict that the coexistence of symbionts should be common in root symbioses, with the density of mutualists increasing in proportion to the needs of the host.
AMERICAN NATURALIST
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Christopher A. Johnson
Summary: Mutualisms are important in maintaining biodiversity, but are not currently included in existing coexistence theory, leading to potential errors in assessing how mutualisms affect the coexistence of competing species. The author develops a theory predicting how multitrophic mutualisms mediate species coexistence and demonstrates the importance of considering mutualisms in evaluating coexistence consequences.
Article
Mathematics, Applied
Yao Shi, Xiongxiong Bao
Summary: This paper provides an analysis of a mathematical model for two competing species in a chemostat, where they feed on a single resource and the dominant species can flocculate. The existence and uniqueness of positive solutions to the single-species model with flocculation are established. Furthermore, the study shows that when the superior species flocculates, there can be coexistence of all species for small attachment.
APPLIED MATHEMATICS LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Xinyi Yan, Jonathan M. Levine, Gaurav S. Kandlikar
Summary: Soil microorganisms play a major role in shaping plant diversity, not only through their direct effects as pathogens, mutualists, and decomposers, but also by altering the outcome of plant interactions. Microbially mediated fitness differences are an important but overlooked effect of soil microbes on plant coexistence, and they have a significant impact on the processes that maintain plant biodiversity.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Biology
Nina Rynne, Geneva Birtles, Jamie Bell, Mung Suan Pau Duhlian, Samuel Mcneil, Adel Mehrpooya, Blake Noske, Yadursha Vakeesan, Michael Bode
Summary: This study proposes a new mechanism for species coexistence based on dispersal differences and the geometry of the habitat patch. It demonstrates that species with different dispersal abilities arrange themselves in concentric patterns of dominance within a habitat patch, with species of superior abilities dominating the interior and species of inferior abilities at the periphery. Additionally, it shows that habitat patches with more complex geometries are more likely to support species coexistence.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Man Qi, Niv DeMalach, Yueping Dong, Hailin Zhang, Tao Sun
Summary: Resource competition theory predicts coexistence and exclusion patterns, but in reality, systems often exhibit preemption exploitation. This study found that under preemption conditions, an R*-preemption trade-off is necessary for species coexistence, and under total preemption, the trade-off alone is sufficient. However, under partial preemption, additional conditions are required for coexistence.
AMERICAN NATURALIST
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Helin Zhang, Daniel Bearup, Ivan Nijs, Shaopeng Wang, Gyorgy Barabas, Yi Tao, Jinbao Liao
Summary: Understanding the mechanisms of biodiversity maintenance is a fundamental issue in ecology. The possibility that species disperse within the landscape along differing paths presents a relatively unexplored mechanism by which diversity could emerge. By embedding a classical metapopulation model within a network framework, researchers found that coexistence is possible on unshared dispersal networks, with species forming self-organised clusters of occupied patches. Additionally, increasing species colonisation rates or average patch connectivity in unshared networks leads to a unimodal biodiversity response, with increasing network size monotonically increasing species richness and producing characteristic species-area curves. This suggests that many more species can co-occur than previously predicted based on the number of limiting resources.
Article
Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications
Linwu Zhong, Liming Zhang, Haihong Li, Qionglin Dai, Junzhong Yang
Summary: This study investigates species coexistence in modified RPSLS games and finds that the interaction structure is crucial for the evolutionary dynamics and different states of multi-species coexistence.
CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Stuart L. Pimm, Jared Diamond, K. David Bishop
Summary: The distribution of fruit pigeons on the island of New Guinea is influenced by geographical accessibility. The coexistence of species in a particular year and location is a nonrandom selection process. The sizes of these species are more widely spread and evenly spaced compared to random sets of species. Additionally, the local status of a highly mobile species decreases as other resident species become more closely related.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Ecology
J. Christopher D. Terry, Jinlin Chen, Owen T. Lewis
Summary: The study experimentally tested the role of a generalist enemy in promoting the coexistence of competing insect species and found idiosyncratic impacts, without evidence of an overall trade-off between reproductive rate and susceptibility to enemies. Modern coexistence theory proved valuable in multi-trophic contexts, but unable to easily predict the overall impact of generalist natural enemies. The Bayesian approach highlighted the separability issues in model parameters and demonstrated the utility of using the full posterior parameter distribution for understanding species coexistence.
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Marine & Freshwater Biology
Karla Kruesi, Luis Miguel Burciaga, Guillermina Alcaraz
Summary: Theory predicts that species can only coexist if they have sufficient differences in resource and/or microhabitat utilization. In hermit crabs, fitness is mainly limited by shell availability. This study found significant overlap in shell use and microhabitat occupation between two hermit crab species, suggesting a potential trade-off between resource exploitation and interference.
Article
Ecology
Thorsten Wiegand, Xugao Wang, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Norman A. Bourg, Min Cao, Xiuqin Ci, Stuart J. Davies, Zhanqing Hao, Robert W. Howe, W. John Kress, Juyu Lian, Jie Li, Luxiang Lin, Yiching Lin, Keping Ma, William McShea, Xiangcheng Mi, Sheng-Hsin Su, I-Fang Sun, Amy Wolf, Wanhui Ye, Andreas Huth
Summary: Ecology still cannot fully explain why so many tree species coexist in natural communities, with a major difficulty being linking individual-level processes to community dynamics. By using tree spatial data, spatial statistics, and dynamical theory, the relationship between spatial patterns and population-level interaction coefficients can be revealed, impacting multispecies dynamics and coexistence.Mechanisms such as animal seed dispersal lead to a rare-species advantage and coexistence of otherwise neutral competitors.
NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Ryosuke Iritani, Suzuki Noriyuki
Summary: Negative interspecific mating interactions can impede species coexistence, while conspecific sperm precedence (CSP) may help mitigate the costs of interspecific mating and hybridization. Experimental and mathematical modeling studies suggest that species exhibiting CSP may struggle to coexist in a local environment in the presence of reproductive interference.
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Cyrill Hess, Jonathan M. Levine, Martin M. Turcotte, Simon P. Hart
Summary: This article investigates the ecological explanations for species coexistence and the impact of trait changes on competitive outcomes. The study finds that phenotypic plasticity can promote species coexistence in a way that is not captured by traditional measures of niche differentiation.
NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
(2022)