Does mutualism hinder biodiversity?

TL;DR

This paper examines how mutualistic interactions influence biodiversity, showing that considering ecological trade-offs and network sparsity can reverse previous findings that mutualism decreases biodiversity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that ecological trade-offs and network structure critically affect the impact of mutualism on biodiversity, challenging prior conclusions.

Findings

Mutualism's effect on biodiversity depends on network structure.

Ecological trade-offs can reverse mutualism's impact.

Sparse networks may promote biodiversity despite mutualism.

Abstract

A recent paper by James et al. finds that mutualistic interactions decrease the biodiversity of model ecosystems. However, this result can be reverted if we consider ecological trade-offs and choose parameters suitable for sparse mutualistic networks instead of fully connected networks.