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Related Concept Videos

Ecological Disturbance02:26

Ecological Disturbance

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Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations
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Published on: February 3, 2023

Dynamic phenotypic clustering in noisy ecosystems.

Morten Ernebjerg1, Roy Kishony

  • 1Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Plos Computational Biology
|March 30, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Environmental noise can surprisingly create order in ecosystems. Random fluctuations paradoxically lead to predictable patterns in species abundance and dynamic clustering, even without distinct ecological niches.

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Theoretical Ecology
  • Mathematical Biology

Background:

  • Ecosystems host numerous interacting species, with abundance patterns often linked to fixed ecological niches.
  • Understanding species abundance in randomly varying environments remains less explored.
  • Competition and predation are key interactions shaping ecological communities.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how random environmental fluctuations influence species abundance patterns in a competitive ecosystem model.
  • To explore the emergence of order and structure in species abundances under noisy conditions.
  • To understand the collective dynamics of many species in response to environmental variability.

Main Methods:

  • A simple mathematical model of interspecific competition in a patchy ecosystem.
  • Simulation of randomly fluctuating environmental conditions.
  • Analysis of species abundance dynamics and interspecific correlations as a function of phenotypic distance (growth rate).

Main Results:

  • Random environmental noise paradoxically induces ordered patterns in species abundance fluctuations.
  • Periodic variations in species correlations emerge, dependent on phenotypic distance.
  • Discrete, dynamic clusters of abundant species form along the phenotypic axis.
  • These collective patterns disappear when considering only isolated species or pairs.

Conclusions:

  • Environmental noise can act as an ordering force in complex, interconnected ecosystems.
  • A balance between noise-induced synchronization and competition-driven desynchronization generates emergent ecological patterns.
  • Dynamic ecological patterns can arise even in the absence of well-defined, static niches.