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Related Experiment Videos

Self-organized instability in complex ecosystems.

Ricard V Solé1, David Alonso, Alan McKane

  • 1Complex Systems Research Group, Department of Physics, FEN-UPC Campus Nord B4, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. sole@santafe.edu

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
|June 25, 2002
PubMed
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Complex ecosystems, like tropical forests, often have many species, including rare ones. A new model suggests this diversity and rarity arise from ecosystems balancing stability and instability, leading to predictable patterns.

Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Theoretical Ecology
  • Mathematical Biology

Background:

  • High species diversity and rarity are common in diverse ecosystems like neotropical forests and coral reefs.
  • The origins of this diversity and the impact of food web complexity on species abundance and temporal fluctuations remain unclear.
  • Complex ecosystems exhibit regularities suggesting organization near instability points.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore a stochastic population dynamics model that explains observed ecological patterns.
  • To investigate the relationship between species number, connectivity, and species abundance distributions.
  • To understand the dynamics of species-rich communities and their tendency towards rarity.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a recent stochastic model of population dynamics.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Analyzed the model's ability to reproduce scaling laws between species number and connectivity.
  • Examined the model's output for species abundance distributions, community fluctuations, and species-area relationships.

    • Main Results:

    • The model successfully reproduced the scaling law linking species number and connectivity.
    • The model generated species abundance distributions with long tails, indicating a predominance of rare species.
    • The model demonstrated complex community fluctuations, including chaotic dynamics, and replicated species-area relations.

    Conclusions:

    • Ecosystems may naturally tend towards instability due to the balance between immigration-driven diversity and network constraints.
    • This tendency positions ecosystems at a critical boundary, promoting large fluctuations and the prevalence of rare species.
    • The observed patterns in species-rich communities, including rarity, could be a consequence of this spontaneous drive towards instability.