Effect of resource dynamics on species packing in diverse ecosystems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how resource dynamics influence species coexistence limits in ecosystems, revealing that externally supplied resources restrict species to half the available niches, unlike self-renewing resources.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized consumer resource model and a new classification schema for ecosystems based on species packing properties, highlighting the impact of resource dynamics.

Findings

Species can occupy only half of the available niches with externally supplied resources.

Resource dynamics significantly influence the maximum number of coexisting species.

A new schema for classifying ecosystems based on species packing is proposed.

Abstract

The competitive exclusion principle asserts that coexisting species must occupy distinct ecological niches (i.e. the number of surviving species can not exceed the number of resources). An open question is to understand if and how different resource dynamics affect this bound. Here, we analyze a generalized consumer resource model with externally supplied resources and show that -- in contrast to self-renewing resources -- species can occupy only half of all available environmental niches. This motivates us to construct a new schema for classifying ecosystems based on species packing properties.