Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems

The coexistence of many competing species in an ecological community is a long-standing theoretical and empirical puzzle. Classic approaches in ecology assume that species fitness and interactions in a given environment are mainly driven by a few essential species traits, and coexistence can be expl...

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Autores principales:	Matthieu Barbier, Claire de Mazancourt, Michel Loreau, Guy Bunin
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	American Physical Society 2021
Materias:	Physics QC1-999
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/8ecf8e0bb49c4d65af51db20a4edbb7b
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:8ecf8e0bb49c4d65af51db20a4edbb7b2021-12-02T12:17:08ZFingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems10.1103/PhysRevX.11.0110092160-3308https://doaj.org/article/8ecf8e0bb49c4d65af51db20a4edbb7b2021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttp://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.011009http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.011009https://doaj.org/toc/2160-3308The coexistence of many competing species in an ecological community is a long-standing theoretical and empirical puzzle. Classic approaches in ecology assume that species fitness and interactions in a given environment are mainly driven by a few essential species traits, and coexistence can be explained by trade-offs between these traits. The apparent diversity of species is then summarized by their positions (“ecological niches”) in a low-dimensional trait space. Yet, in a complex community, any particular set of traits and trade-offs is unlikely to encompass the full organization of the community. A diametrically opposite approach assumes that species interactions are disordered, i.e., essentially random, as might arise when many species traits combine in complex ways. This approach is appealing theoretically, and can lead to novel emergent phenomena, fundamentally different from the picture painted by low-dimensional theories. Nonetheless, fully disordered interactions are incompatible with many-species coexistence, and neither disorder nor its dynamical consequences have received direct empirical support so far. Here we ask what happens when random species interactions are minimally constrained by coexistence. We show theoretically that this leads to testable predictions. Species interactions remain highly disordered, yet with a “diffuse” statistical structure: interaction strengths are biased so that successful competitors subtly favor each other, and correlated so that competitors partition their impacts on other species. We provide strong empirical evidence for this pattern, in data from grassland biodiversity experiments that match our predictions quantitatively. This is a first-of-a-kind test of disorder on empirically measured interactions, and unique evidence that species interactions and coexistence emerge from an underlying high-dimensional space of ecological traits. Our findings provide a new null model for inferring interaction networks with minimal prior information and a set of empirical fingerprints that support a statistical physics-inspired approach of complex ecosystems.Matthieu BarbierClaire de MazancourtMichel LoreauGuy BuninAmerican Physical SocietyarticlePhysicsQC1-999ENPhysical Review X, Vol 11, Iss 1, p 011009 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Physics QC1-999
spellingShingle	Physics QC1-999 Matthieu Barbier Claire de Mazancourt Michel Loreau Guy Bunin Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems
description	The coexistence of many competing species in an ecological community is a long-standing theoretical and empirical puzzle. Classic approaches in ecology assume that species fitness and interactions in a given environment are mainly driven by a few essential species traits, and coexistence can be explained by trade-offs between these traits. The apparent diversity of species is then summarized by their positions (“ecological niches”) in a low-dimensional trait space. Yet, in a complex community, any particular set of traits and trade-offs is unlikely to encompass the full organization of the community. A diametrically opposite approach assumes that species interactions are disordered, i.e., essentially random, as might arise when many species traits combine in complex ways. This approach is appealing theoretically, and can lead to novel emergent phenomena, fundamentally different from the picture painted by low-dimensional theories. Nonetheless, fully disordered interactions are incompatible with many-species coexistence, and neither disorder nor its dynamical consequences have received direct empirical support so far. Here we ask what happens when random species interactions are minimally constrained by coexistence. We show theoretically that this leads to testable predictions. Species interactions remain highly disordered, yet with a “diffuse” statistical structure: interaction strengths are biased so that successful competitors subtly favor each other, and correlated so that competitors partition their impacts on other species. We provide strong empirical evidence for this pattern, in data from grassland biodiversity experiments that match our predictions quantitatively. This is a first-of-a-kind test of disorder on empirically measured interactions, and unique evidence that species interactions and coexistence emerge from an underlying high-dimensional space of ecological traits. Our findings provide a new null model for inferring interaction networks with minimal prior information and a set of empirical fingerprints that support a statistical physics-inspired approach of complex ecosystems.
format	article
author	Matthieu Barbier Claire de Mazancourt Michel Loreau Guy Bunin
author_facet	Matthieu Barbier Claire de Mazancourt Michel Loreau Guy Bunin
author_sort	Matthieu Barbier
title	Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems
title_short	Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems
title_full	Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems
title_fullStr	Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems
title_full_unstemmed	Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems
title_sort	fingerprints of high-dimensional coexistence in complex ecosystems
publisher	American Physical Society
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/8ecf8e0bb49c4d65af51db20a4edbb7b
work_keys_str_mv	AT matthieubarbier fingerprintsofhighdimensionalcoexistenceincomplexecosystems AT clairedemazancourt fingerprintsofhighdimensionalcoexistenceincomplexecosystems AT michelloreau fingerprintsofhighdimensionalcoexistenceincomplexecosystems AT guybunin fingerprintsofhighdimensionalcoexistenceincomplexecosystems
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Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems

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