Disturbance accelerates the transition from low- to high- diversity state in a model ecosystem

Abstract

The effect of disturbance on a model ecosystem of sessile and mutually competitive species [Mathiesen et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 188101 (2011); Mitarai et al. Phys. Rev. E 86, 011929 (2012) ] is studied. The disturbance stochastically removes individuals from the system, and the created empty sites are re-colonized by neighbouring species. We show that the stable high-diversity state, maintained by occasional cyclic species interactions that create isolated patches of meta-populations, is robust against small disturbance. We further demonstrate that finite disturbance can accelerate the transition from the low- to high-diversity state by helping creation of small patches through diffusion of boundaries between species with stand-off relation.

8 pages, 8 figures. Typos corrected

References in corpus (9)

• Neutral Theory and Relative Species Abundance in Ecology
• Mobility promotes and jeopardizes biodiversity in rock-paper-scissors games
• Coexistence versus extinction in the stochastic cyclic Lotka-Volterra model
• Noise-guided evolution within cyclical interactions
• Coexistence and Survival in Conservative Lotka-Volterra Networks
• Ecosystems with mutually exclusive interactions self-organize to a state of high diversity
• Intransitivity and coexistence in four species cyclic games
• Interplay between partnership formation and competition in generalized May-Leonard games
• Emergence of diversity in a model ecosystem

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Stochastic population dynamics in spatially extended predator-prey systems
• Topologically robust zero-sum games and Pfaffian orientation -- How network topology determines the long-time dynamics of the antisymmetric Lotka-Volterra equation
• Characterization of phase transitions in a model ecosystem of sessile species