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Theoretical ecology

Coexistence holes fill a gap in community assembly theory

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 1062–1063 (2021)Cite this article

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The mathematics of counting holes reveals hidden paths to species coexistence and the obstacles that block the way.

Algebraic topology is the branch of pure mathematics that can explain why a doughnut and a coffee cup are equivalent to each other but different from a pair of pants. It is so seemingly abstracted from reality that the physicist George Gamow commented it was one of only two areas of mathematics that had no application in physics1. Fast forward 60 years and algebraic topology has not only found applications throughout physics, but it is also finding its way into diverse fields of biology, from predicting the structure of biomolecules2 to describing neural pathways in the brain3. Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Angulo et al.4 show how the mathematics of “counting and collating holes”5 can reveal deep insights into the assembly (and disassembly) of ecological communities.

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Fig. 1: Alternative assembly hypergraphs, constructed from a collection of four species, and their corresponding Betti numbers.

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  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Andrew D. Letten

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Letten, A.D. Coexistence holes fill a gap in community assembly theory. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 1062–1063 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01461-9

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