Conflict between dynamical and evolutionary stability in simple ecosystems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how evolutionary processes in simple ecosystems can reduce their overall resilience, highlighting a conflict between individual fitness optimization and ecosystem stability.

Contribution

It demonstrates that evolutionarily stable strategies can significantly decrease ecosystem resilience, revealing a fundamental conflict between evolutionary stability and dynamical stability.

Findings

Ecosystem resilience decreases when populations evolve to their ESS.

Maximum resilience is not achieved at the ESS.

Evolutionary processes can undermine ecosystem stability.

Abstract

Here, we address the essential question of whether, in the context of evolving populations, ecosystems attain properties that enable persistence of the ecosystem itself. We use a simple ecosystem model describing resource, producer, and consumer dynamics to analyze how evolution affects dynamical stability properties of the ecosystem. In particular, we compare resilience of the entire system after allowing the producer and consumer populations to evolve to their evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), to the maximum attainable resilience. We find a substantial reduction in ecosystem resilience when producers and consumers are allowed to evolve compared to the maximal attainable resilience. This study illustrates the inherent difference and possible conflict between maximizing individual-level fitness and maximizing resilience of entire ecosystems.