How turbulence regulates biodiversity in systems with cyclic competition

TL;DR

This paper investigates how turbulent fluid flows influence biodiversity in ecosystems with cyclic competition, revealing conditions under which turbulence can sustain species coexistence.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical model combining turbulence, diffusion, and cyclic biological interactions to analyze biodiversity maintenance in fluid environments.

Findings

Biodiversity is maintained under specific turbulence and diffusion conditions.

Bifurcations in species dynamics occur as advection and diffusion strengths vary.

Turbulence can promote coexistence in well-mixed environments.

Abstract

Cyclic, nonhierarchical interactions among biological species represent a general mechanism by which ecosystems are able to maintain high levels of biodiversity. However, species coexistence is often possible only in spatially extended systems with a limited range of dispersal, whereas in well-mixed environments models for cyclic competition often lead to a loss of biodiversity. Here we consider the dispersal of biological species in a fluid environment, where mixing is achieved by a combination of advection and diffusion. In particular, we perform a detailed numerical analysis of a model composed of turbulent advection, diffusive transport, and cyclic interactions among biological species in two spatial dimensions and discuss the circumstances under which biodiversity is maintained when external environmental conditions, such as resource supply, are uniform in space. Cyclic interactions are represented by a model with three competitors, resembling the children's game of rock-paper-scissors, whereas the flow field is obtained from a direct numerical simulation of two-dimensional turbulence with hyperviscosity. It is shown that the space-averaged dynamics undergoes bifurcations as the relative strengths of advection and diffusion compared to biological interactions are varied.