Impossible ecologies: Interaction networks and stability of coexistence in ecological communities
Yu Meng, Szabolcs Horv\'at, Carl D. Modes, Pierre A. Haas

TL;DR
This paper investigates how the specific arrangement of interactions in small ecological communities influences their stability, revealing that network structure can be more critical than interaction types alone.
Contribution
It develops an exhaustive analysis of small ecological networks, identifying rare impossible ecologies and demonstrating the significant impact of network structure on stability.
Findings
Most small networks are capable of stable coexistence.
A small subset of networks are impossible ecologies with no stable coexistence.
Network arrangement can drastically alter stability probabilities.
Abstract
Does an ecological community allow stable coexistence? Identifying the general principles that determine the answer to this question is a central problem of theoretical ecology. Random matrix theory approaches have uncovered the general trends of the effect of competitive, mutualistic, and predator-prey interactions between species on stability of coexistence. However, an ecological community is determined not only by the counts of these different interaction types, but also by their network arrangement. This cannot be accounted for in a direct statistical description that would enable random matrix theory approaches. Here, we therefore develop a different approach, of exhaustive analysis of small ecological communities, to show that this arrangement of interactions can influence stability of coexistence more than these general trends. We analyse all interaction networks of $N\leqslant…
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Taxonomy
TopicsEvolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Ecosystem dynamics and resilience · Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
