Complementarity and diversity in a soluble model ecosystem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a solvable model ecosystem where species traits and their complementarity influence biodiversity, providing explicit formulas for species concentrations and diversity based on trait biases.

Contribution

It presents a novel soluble model ecosystem with binary traits and complementarity-based interactions, analyzed using statistical mechanics.

Findings

Explicit expressions for equilibrium species concentrations

Demonstrates how trait bias affects biodiversity

Provides a framework for studying complementarity in ecosystems

Abstract

Complementarity among species with different traits is one of the basic processes affecting biodiversity, defined as the number of species in the ecosystem. We present here a soluble model ecosystem in which the species are characterized by binary traits and their pairwise interactions follow a complementarity principle. Manipulation of the species composition, and so the study of its effects on the species diversity is achieved through the introduction of a bias parameter favoring one of the traits. Using statistical mechanics tools we find explicit expressions for the allowed values of the equilibrium species concentrations in terms of the control parameters of the model.