Symmetry-based approach to species-rich ecological communities

Disordered systems theory provides powerful tools to analyze the generic behaviors of high-dimensional systems, such as species-rich ecological communities or neural networks. By assuming randomness in their interactions, universality ensures that many microscopic details are irrelevant to system-wide dynamics; but the choice of a random ensemble still limits the generality of results. We show here, in the context of ecological dynamics, that these analytical tools do not require a specific choice of ensemble and that solutions can be found based only on a fundamental rotational symmetry in the interactions, encoding the idea that traits can be recombined into new species without altering global features. Dynamical outcomes then depend on the spectrum of the interaction matrix as a free parameter, allowing us to bridge between results found in different models of interactions and extend beyond them to previously unidentified behaviors. The distinctive feature of ecological models is the possibility of species extinctions, which leads to an increased universality of dynamics as the fraction of extinct species increases. We expect these findings can inform new developments in theoretical ecology as well as other families of complex systems.