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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...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2018
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5998089 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT kawatsukazutaka densitydependentinterspecificinteractionsandthecomplexitystabilityrelationship AT kondohmichio densitydependentinterspecificinteractionsandthecomplexitystabilityrelationship |