Mechanisms promoting biodiversity in ecosystems

TL;DR

This paper reviews various mechanisms in theoretical ecology that promote biodiversity by addressing or circumventing the Competitive Exclusion Principle, explaining how diverse ecosystems like plankton communities coexist despite resource limitations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of mechanisms that challenge or bypass the CEP, enhancing understanding of biodiversity maintenance in ecosystems.

Findings

Mechanisms that alleviate CEP constraints in well-mixed systems.

Strategies that enable coexistence despite resource competition.

Insights into biodiversity persistence in plankton communities.

Abstract

Explaining biodiversity is a central focus in theoretical ecology. A significant obstacle arises from the Competitive Exclusion Principle (CEP), which states that two species competing for the same type of resources cannot coexist at constant population densities, or more generally, the number of consumer species cannot exceed that of resource species at steady states. The conflict between CEP and biodiversity is exemplified by the paradox of the plankton, where a few types of limiting resources support a plethora of plankton species. In this review, we introduce mechanisms proposed over the years for promoting biodiversity in ecosystems, with a special focus on those that alleviate the constraints imposed by the CEP, including mechanisms that challenge the CEP in well-mixed systems at a steady state or those that circumvent its limitations through contextual differences.