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Dynamical persistence in high-diversity resource-consumer communities.
1Department of Physics, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
Highly diverse ecological communities with resource competition and migration can exhibit persistent abundance fluctuations. This occurs when species diversity exceeds the number of available resources, driving unstable population dynamics.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Theoretical Ecology
- Mathematical Biology
Background:
- Ecological communities face complex dynamics from species interactions and environmental factors.
- Understanding the conditions for stable versus fluctuating population sizes is crucial in ecology.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the conditions under which highly diverse ecological communities exhibit persistent abundance fluctuations.
- To identify the key ratio determining community stability versus persistent fluctuations.
Main Methods:
- Mathematical modeling of ecological communities with resource competition and migration.
- Analysis of parameter space to identify regimes leading to stable equilibria or persistent fluctuations.
- Examination of the role of species diversity relative to resource availability.
Main Results:
- Persistent abundance fluctuations are robustly predicted in specific parameter regimes.
- The ratio of realized species diversity to the number of resources is a critical determinant.
- When this ratio exceeds one, competitive exclusion leads to unstable or marginally stable fixed points, resulting in fluctuations.
Conclusions:
- Highly diverse communities with resource competition and migration are prone to persistent abundance fluctuations.
- The critical threshold for fluctuations is when species diversity outnumbers available resources.
- Even minor model variations can destabilize theoretical equilibria, favoring persistent fluctuations in diverse systems.

