New forms of structure in ecosystems revealed with the Kuramoto model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators can reveal new structural insights into ecological systems, highlighting the emergence of synchrony groups and chimeric patterns that reflect real ecological subnetworks.

Contribution

It introduces the application of the Kuramoto model to ecological systems, showing how it can uncover structural features like synchrony groups and chimera states in ecosystems.

Findings

Synchrony groups correspond to ecological subnetworks

Chimeric structures depend on coupling strength

Kuramoto model offers new insights into ecological dynamics

Abstract

Ecological systems, as is often noted, are complex. Equally notable is the generalization that complex systems tend to be oscillatory, whether Huygens simple patterns of pendulum entrainment or the twisted chaotic orbits of Lorenz convection rolls. The analytics of oscillators may thus provide insight into the structure of ecological systems. One of the most popular analytical tools for such study is the Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators. Using a well-studied system of pests and their enemies in an agroecosystem, we apply this model as a stylized vision of the dynamics of that real system, to ask whether its actual natural history is reflected in the dynamics of the qualitatively instantiated Kuramoto model. Emerging from the model is a series of synchrony groups generally corresponding to subnetworks of the natural system, with an overlying chimeric structure, depending on the strength of the inter-oscillator coupling. We conclude that the Kuramoto model presents a novel window through which interesting questions about the structure of ecological systems may emerge.