Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Higher-Order Interactions Can Promote Coexistence by Rewiring Intransitivities Into Competitive Networks.

Zachary Hajian-Forooshani1,2, Ivette Perfecto3, Warren Irizarry3

  • 1German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.

Ecology Letters
|June 30, 2026
PubMed
Summary

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Disturbance Interacts with Dispersal and Niche Breadth to Shape Scale-Dependent Diversity Change in Metacommunities.

The American naturalist·2026
Same author

Trait-explicit approaches cast new light on fragmentation's effects on biodiversity.

Trends in ecology & evolution·2025
Same author

Keystone predator and keystone intransitivity and the rescue of a competitively subdominant species.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same author

The population dynamics of clustered consumer-resource spatial patterns: Insights from the demographics of a Turing mechanism.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same author

Momentum for agroecology in the USA.

Nature food·2024
Same author

Combining intransitive and higher-order effects in a coupled oscillator framework: A case study of an ant community.

Ecology·2023
Same journal

Plants That Evolved Under High Phylogenetic Diversity Have Higher Invasion Success, Particularly in Undisturbed Communities.

Ecology letters·2026
Same journal

Predictors of Food Web Resistance to Environmental Change.

Ecology letters·2026
Same journal

AI, Comparative Advantage, and the Next Decade of Ecological Research.

Ecology letters·2026
Same journal

Towards Key Principles of Host-Associated Microbiome Assembly.

Ecology letters·2026
Same journal

Temperature and Resource Supply Drive Continental Variation in Size Structure of Freshwater Food Webs.

Ecology letters·2026
Same journal

Niche Overlap Is Not Enough: Same Overlap, Contrasting Fluctuations.

Ecology letters·2026
See all related articles
This summary is machine-generated.

Higher-order interactions (HOIs) can restructure ecological networks, promoting species coexistence. Temporal variations in these interactions create instability, leading to competitive intransitivity and coexistence in tropical ant communities.

Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Community Ecology
  • Theoretical Ecology

Background:

  • Higher-order interactions (HOIs) are theorized to promote species coexistence.
  • The ecological mechanisms driving this effect in natural communities are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the ecological mechanisms by which HOIs influence coexistence in a tropical ant community.
  • To demonstrate how HOIs can restructure competitive networks and link to intransitivity.

Main Methods:

  • Integration of natural history and ecological theory.
  • Estimation of pairwise competitive interactions using over two years of community data.
  • Modeling the impact of a specific HOI (parasitoid of dominant species) on network dynamics.
Keywords:
antscoexistencecompetitionhigher‐order interactionshost‐parasitoid interactionintransitivityphoridstrait‐mediated indirect interaction

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Pairwise interactions alone could not replicate observed community dynamics.
  • Incorporating an HOI (parasitoid) theoretically reorganized competitive networks to match empirical data.
  • Temporal variation in HOIs induced shifts between dominance regimes, with intervening intransitivities promoting coexistence.

Conclusions:

  • HOIs can mechanistically link to competitive intransitivity through the rewiring of species interactions.
  • This study provides an empirical example of the mechanisms behind HOI-driven coexistence.
  • HOIs and intransitivity, often studied separately, are mechanistically linked in community dynamics.