Stability and selective extinction in complex mutualistic networks
We study species abundance in the empirical plant-pollinator mutualistic networks exhibiting broad degree distributions, with uniform intra-group competition assumed, by the Lotka-Volterra equation. The stability of a fixed point is found to be identified by the signs of its non-zero components and those of its neighboring fixed points. Taking the annealed approximation, we derive the non-zero components to be formulated in terms of degrees and the rescaled interaction strengths, which lead us to find different stable fixed points depending on parameters, and we obtain the phase diagram. The selective extinction phase finds small-degree species extinct and effective interaction reduced, maintaining stability and hindering the onset of instability. The non-zero minimum species abundances from different empirical networks show data collapse when rescaled as predicted theoretically.
Code (1)
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Ranking species in mutualistic networks
Understanding the architectural subtleties of ecological networks, believed to confer them enhanced stability and robustness, is a subject of outmost relevance. Mutualistic interactions have been profusely studied and th…
ManagementBifurcations and multistability in empirical mutualistic networks
Individual species may experience diverse outcomes, from prosperity to extinction, in an ecological community subject to external and internal variations. Despite the wealth of theoretical results derived from random mat…
ManagementThe geometry of coexistence in large ecosystems
The role of species interactions in controlling the interplay between the stability of an ecosystem and its biodiversity is still not well understood. The ability of ecological communities to recover after a small pertur…
Assessing mutualistic metacommunity capacity by integrating spatial and interaction networks
We develop a spatially realistic model of mutualistic metacommunities that exploits the joint structure of spatial and interaction networks. This model exhibits a sharp transition between a stable non-null equilibrium st…
Nested species interactions promote feasibility over stability during the assembly of a pollinator community
The foundational concepts behind the persistence of ecological communities have been based on two ecological properties: dynamical stability and feasibility. The former is typically regarded as the capacity of a communit…