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Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space

Speciation, diversification, and competition between species challenge the stability of complex ecosystems. Laboratory experiments often focus on one or two species competing under conditions where they may grow exponentially. Field studies, in contrast, emphasize multi-species communities character...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mitarai, Namiko, Heinsalu, Els, Sneppen, Kim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4018333/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24819515
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096665
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author Mitarai, Namiko
Heinsalu, Els
Sneppen, Kim
author_facet Mitarai, Namiko
Heinsalu, Els
Sneppen, Kim
author_sort Mitarai, Namiko
collection PubMed
description Speciation, diversification, and competition between species challenge the stability of complex ecosystems. Laboratory experiments often focus on one or two species competing under conditions where they may grow exponentially. Field studies, in contrast, emphasize multi-species communities characterized by many types of ecological interactions. A general problem is to understand conditions that support a dynamically maintained coexistence of many species in an ecosystem over a long time span. In the present paper we propose a lattice model of multiple competing and evolving sessile species. When allowing the interspecies interactions to mutate, we obtain coexistence of many species in a complex ecosystem, provided that there is a cost for each interaction. The diversity reached by the model incorporating speciation is found to be substantially higher than in the case when entirely new species appear due to immigration from outside of the considered ecosystem. The species self-organize their spatial distribution through competitive interactions to create many patches, implicitly protecting each other from competitively superior species, and speciation in each patch leads the system to high diversity. We also show that species that exist a long time tend to have a relatively small population, as this allows them to avoid encounter with competitive invaders.
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spelling pubmed-40183332014-05-16 Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space Mitarai, Namiko Heinsalu, Els Sneppen, Kim PLoS One Research Article Speciation, diversification, and competition between species challenge the stability of complex ecosystems. Laboratory experiments often focus on one or two species competing under conditions where they may grow exponentially. Field studies, in contrast, emphasize multi-species communities characterized by many types of ecological interactions. A general problem is to understand conditions that support a dynamically maintained coexistence of many species in an ecosystem over a long time span. In the present paper we propose a lattice model of multiple competing and evolving sessile species. When allowing the interspecies interactions to mutate, we obtain coexistence of many species in a complex ecosystem, provided that there is a cost for each interaction. The diversity reached by the model incorporating speciation is found to be substantially higher than in the case when entirely new species appear due to immigration from outside of the considered ecosystem. The species self-organize their spatial distribution through competitive interactions to create many patches, implicitly protecting each other from competitively superior species, and speciation in each patch leads the system to high diversity. We also show that species that exist a long time tend to have a relatively small population, as this allows them to avoid encounter with competitive invaders. Public Library of Science 2014-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4018333/ /pubmed/24819515 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096665 Text en © 2014 Mitarai et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mitarai, Namiko
Heinsalu, Els
Sneppen, Kim
Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space
title Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space
title_full Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space
title_fullStr Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space
title_full_unstemmed Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space
title_short Speciation, Diversification, and Coexistence of Sessile Species That Compete for Space
title_sort speciation, diversification, and coexistence of sessile species that compete for space
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4018333/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24819515
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096665
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