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Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship

Ever since May theorized that communities with larger numbers of species or interspecific interactions are inherently unstable, the mechanism allowing for the stable existence of complex communities in nature has been a central question in ecology. The main efforts to answer this question have sough...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kawatsu, Kazutaka, Kondoh, Michio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5998089/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29794052
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0698
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author Kawatsu, Kazutaka
Kondoh, Michio
author_facet Kawatsu, Kazutaka
Kondoh, Michio
author_sort Kawatsu, Kazutaka
collection PubMed
description Ever since May theorized that communities with larger numbers of species or interspecific interactions are inherently unstable, the mechanism allowing for the stable existence of complex communities in nature has been a central question in ecology. The main efforts to answer this question have sought to identify non-random features of ecological systems that can reverse a negative complexity–stability relationship into a positive one, but are far from successful, especially in their generality. Here, using the traditional community matrix analysis, we show that variation in the density dependence of interspecific interactions, which should be ubiquitous in nature, can dramatically affect the complexity–stability relationship. More specifically, we reveal that a positive complexity–stability relationship arises when harmful interspecific effects have larger density dependence than beneficial ones, regardless of the signs (i.e. positive or negative) of their dependence. Furthermore, numerical simulations demonstrated the synergistic stabilizing effect of interaction type diversity and density-dependence variation. Thus, this concept of density-dependence variation advances our understanding of the complexity–stability relationship in the real world.
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spelling pubmed-59980892018-06-13 Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship Kawatsu, Kazutaka Kondoh, Michio Proc Biol Sci Ecology Ever since May theorized that communities with larger numbers of species or interspecific interactions are inherently unstable, the mechanism allowing for the stable existence of complex communities in nature has been a central question in ecology. The main efforts to answer this question have sought to identify non-random features of ecological systems that can reverse a negative complexity–stability relationship into a positive one, but are far from successful, especially in their generality. Here, using the traditional community matrix analysis, we show that variation in the density dependence of interspecific interactions, which should be ubiquitous in nature, can dramatically affect the complexity–stability relationship. More specifically, we reveal that a positive complexity–stability relationship arises when harmful interspecific effects have larger density dependence than beneficial ones, regardless of the signs (i.e. positive or negative) of their dependence. Furthermore, numerical simulations demonstrated the synergistic stabilizing effect of interaction type diversity and density-dependence variation. Thus, this concept of density-dependence variation advances our understanding of the complexity–stability relationship in the real world. The Royal Society 2018-05-30 2018-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5998089/ /pubmed/29794052 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0698 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Kawatsu, Kazutaka
Kondoh, Michio
Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
title Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
title_full Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
title_fullStr Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
title_full_unstemmed Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
title_short Density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
title_sort density-dependent interspecific interactions and the complexity–stability relationship
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5998089/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29794052
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0698
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