Biodiversity, extinctions, and evolution of ecosystems with shared resources

Vladimir Kozlov, Sergey Vakulenko, and Uno Wennergren
Phys. Rev. E 95, 032413 – Published 21 March 2017

Abstract

We investigate the formation of stable ecological networks where many species share the same resource. We show that such a stable ecosystem naturally occurs as a result of extinctions. We obtain an analytical relation for the number of coexisting species, and we find a relation describing how many species that may become extinct as a result of a sharp environmental change. We introduce a special parameter that is a combination of species traits and resource characteristics used in the model formulation. This parameter describes the pressure on the system to converge, by extinctions. When that stress parameter is large, we obtain that the species traits are concentrated at certain values. This stress parameter is thereby a parameter that determines the level of final biodiversity of the system. Moreover, we show that the dynamics of this limit system can be described by simple differential equations.

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  • Received 18 January 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.95.032413

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics of Living Systems

Authors & Affiliations

Vladimir Kozlov*

  • Department of Mathematics, University of Linkoping, 58183 Linkoping, Sweden

Sergey Vakulenko

  • Institute for Mechanical Engineering Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia and Saint Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Uno Wennergren

  • Department of Ecology, University of Linkoping, 58183 Linkoping, Sweden

  • *vladimir.kozlov@liu.se

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 3 — March 2017

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