# Trade-off shapes diversity in eco-evolutionary dynamics

## TL;DR

This paper presents ITEEM, a minimal eco-evolutionary model showing how trade-offs influence diversity, leading to structured communities with cyclic interactions and phase transitions in eco-evolutionary dynamics.

## Contribution

The paper introduces ITEEM, a novel minimal model that links trade-offs to eco-evolutionary diversity and community structure without ad hoc assumptions.

## Key findings

- Trade-off strength causes four distinct diversity phases.
- Model reproduces observed eco-evolutionary patterns.
- Structured communities with cyclic interactions emerge naturally.

## Abstract

We introduce an Interaction and Trade-off based Eco-Evolutionary Model (ITEEM), in which species are competing for common resources in a well-mixed system, and their evolution in interaction trait space is subject to a life-history trade-off between replication rate and competitive ability. We demonstrate that the strength of the trade-off has a fundamental impact on eco-evolutionary dynamics, as it imposes four phases of diversity, including a sharp phase transition. Despite its minimalism, ITEEM produces without further ad hoc features a remarkable range of observed patterns of eco-evolutionary dynamics. Most notably we find self-organization towards structured communities with high and sustainable diversity, in which competing species form interaction cycles similar to rock-paper-scissors games.