Interconnection between density-regulation and stability in competitive ecological network

TL;DR

This study explores how different density-dependent growth profiles influence the stability of competitive ecological networks, revealing that strong low-density regulation and higher connectance enhance community stability.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical analysis of the impact of theta-logistic growth profiles on ecological stability, highlighting the roles of density dependence, network connectance, and species life history strategies.

Findings

More species with strong low-density regulation increase stability.

Higher network connectance correlates with increased stability.

Communities with a higher fraction of r-selected species are more stable.

Abstract

In natural ecosystems, species can be characterized by the nonlinear density-dependent self-regulation of their growth profile. Species of many taxa show a substantial density-dependent reduction for low population size. Nevertheless, many show the opposite trend; density regulation is minimal for small populations and increases significantly when the population size is near the carrying capacity. The theta-logistic growth equation can portray the intraspecific density regulation in the growth profile, theta being the density regulation parameter. In this study, we examine the role of these different growth profiles on the stability of a competitive ecological community with the help of a mathematical model of competitive species interactions. This manuscript deals with the random matrix theory to understand the stability of the classical theta-logistic models of competitive interactions. Our results suggest that having more species with strong density dependence, which self-regulate at low densities, leads to more stable communities. With this, stability also depends on the complexity of the ecological network. Species network connectance (link density) shows a consistent trend of increasing stability, whereas community size (species richness) shows a context-dependent effect. We also interpret our results from the aspect of two different life history strategies: r and K-selection. Our results show that the stability of a competitive network increases with the fraction of r-selected species in the community. Our result is robust, irrespective of different network architectures.