Environmental coupling in ecosystems: From oscillation quenching to rhythmogenesis

TL;DR

This paper models ecological systems with coupled patches and dynamic environments, revealing mechanisms for oscillation generation and suppression, and analyzing synchronization phenomena in spatially extended ecosystems.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled ecological model incorporating dispersal and dynamic environments, uncovering novel behaviors like rhythmogenesis and amplitude death.

Findings

Dynamic environment and dispersal induce oscillations and their suppression.

Transition from homogeneous to inhomogeneous steady states via bifurcation.

Identification of synchronization patterns such as in-phase and out-of-phase.

Abstract

How do landscape fragmentation affects ecosystems diversity and stability is an important and complex question in ecology with no simple answer, as spatially separated habitats where species live are highly dynamic rather than just static. Taking into account the species dispersal among nearby connected habitats (or patches) through a common dynamic environment, we model the consumer-resource interactions with ring type coupled network. Characterizing the dynamics of consumer-resource interactions in a coupled ecological system with three fundamental mechanisms: such as the interaction within the patch, the interaction between the patch and the interaction through a common dynamic environment, we report the occurrence of various atypical collective behaviors. We show that, the interplay between dynamic environment and dispersal among connected patches exhibits the mechanism of generation of oscillations, i.e., rhythmogenesis, as well as suppression of oscillations, i.e., amplitude death and oscillation death. Also, the transition of homogeneous steady state to inhomogeneous steady state occurs through a co-dimension-2 bifurcation. Emphasizing a network of spatially extended system, the coupled model exposes the collective behavior of synchrony-stability relationship with various synchronization occurrences such as in-phase and out-of-phase.