Theoretical ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ecosystems must be able to bounce back from perturbations to persist without species extinctions. This study uses theoretical modelling to show the importance of reactivity—how species respond in the short term to perturbations—for assessing the health of complex ecosystems, revealing that it can be a better predictor of extinction risk than stability.

    • Yuguang Yang
    • , Katharine Z. Coyte
    •  & Aming Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about how the evolution of gut microbiota is impacted by their surrounding community. Here, the authors examine the evolutionary ecology of the human gut microbiome, modelling resource competition to show that local evolutionary history can impact the structure and function of host microbiota.

    • Benjamin H. Good
    •  & Layton B. Rosenfeld

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modelling diverse ecological phenomena across scales with a single mathematical framework is challenging. Here, the authors draw on density functional theory to develop a framework that bridges between mechanistic theories at fine scales and statistical models at large scales.

    • Martin-I. Trappe
    •  & Ryan A. Chisholm

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Responses of ecosystem services to species losses are highly context-dependent. Here, the authors develop a model to identify general rules in the robustness of ecosystem service supply to species losses, and demonstrate its applicability using real-world ecosystem service networks.

    • Samuel R. P.-J. Ross
    • , Jean-François Arnoldi
    •  & Ian Donohue

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Seed banks are generated when individuals enter a dormant state, a phenomenon that has evolved among diverse taxa, but that is also found in stem cells, brains, and tumors. Here, Lennon et al. synthesize the fundamentals of seed-bank theory and the emergence of complex patterns and dynamics in mathematics and the life sciences.

    • Jay T. Lennon
    • , Frank den Hollander
    •  & Jochen Blath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the dynamics of species interactions can help predict community responses to climate change. A spatially explicit model finds that species interactions and competition mitigate the harmful impacts of climate change, and that temperature-dependent competition makes communities more variable and responsive to changing climates.

    • Anna Åkesson
    • , Alva Curtsdotter
    •  & György Barabás

  • Article
    | Open Access

    N2 fixation by heterotrophic bacteria has recently been found to take place on sinking marine particles, but an understanding of its regulation and importance is lacking. Here the authors develop a trait-based model for this N2 fixation, finding that this once overlooked process could have global importance.

    • Subhendu Chakraborty
    • , Ken H. Andersen
    •  & Lasse Riemann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fluctuations in ecosystems and other large dynamical systems are driven by intrinsic and extrinsic noise and contain hidden information which is difficult to extract. Here, the authors derive analytical characterizations of fluctuations in random interacting systems, allowing inference of network properties from time series data.

    • Yvonne Krumbeck
    • , Qian Yang
    •  & Tim Rogers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Advances in process-based community ecology models are hindered by the challenge of linking functional traits to demography in species-rich systems, where a high number of parameters need to be estimated from limited data. Here the authors propose a new Bayesian framework to calibrate community models via functional traits, and validate it in a species-rich plant community.

    • Loïc Chalmandrier
    • , Florian Hartig
    •  & Loïc Pellissier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether body size affects community assembly mechanisms of soil biota. Here, the authors analyse soil microbial and nematode communities sampled along a 4000-km transect in China and global soil microbiome data to show that bacterial assembly is governed by high dispersal, whereas larger taxa are more influenced by deterministic processes.

    • Lu Luan
    • , Yuji Jiang
    •  & Bo Sun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether or not diversity begets stability in ecological networks could depend on the spatial dispersal dynamics of species. Here the authors use mathematical models based on Turing pattern formation to show that trophic interactions combined with dispersal can destabilize complex ecosystems.

    • Joseph W. Baron
    •  & Tobias Galla

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant-pollinator interactions are not fixed but instead can change seasonally and across years. Here, the authors provide a holistic perspective on how plants and pollinators first enter, then comprise, and ultimately leave interaction networks over time.

    • Bernat Bramon Mora
    • , Eura Shin
    •  & Daniel B. Stouffer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dynamics of ecological communities depends on interactions between species as well as those between species and their environment, however the effects of the latter are poorly understood. Here, Yeakel et al. reveal how species that modify their environment (ecosystem engineers) impact community dynamics and the risk of extinction.

    • Justin D. Yeakel
    • , Mathias M. Pires
    •  & Thilo Gross

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbial plant-soil feedbacks (PSF) are fundamentally important for plant diversity. The authors present a spatially explicit dynamic model that separates the effects of microbial mutualists and pathogens, thereby presenting a testable mechanistic framework to reconcile previously puzzling observations of the strength and direction of PSF with diversity maintenance.

    • John W. Schroeder
    • , Andrew Dobson
    •  & Edward Allen Herre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aside from their pollination function, pollinators consume and are consumed by other members of ecological communities; these relationships could explain the controversial effects of pollinators on ecological networks. Here the authors show that when mutualists such as pollinators are introduced into food webs, they increase ecosystem biodiversity, stability, and function.

    • Kayla R. S. Hale
    • , Fernanda S. Valdovinos
    •  & Neo D. Martinez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plastic pollution is an escalating problem and there is a need to predict the range of plastic sizes that an organism of interest could feasibly ingest. Here the authors use previously published data to develop an allometric equation for plastic size ingested as a function of animal body size, a relationship which could help predict risk of plastic introduction into food webs.

    • Ifan B. Jâms
    • , Fredric M. Windsor
    •  & Isabelle Durance

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether plant trait relationships found at the global scale extend to climatic extremes. Here the authors analyse six major aboveground traits to show that known plant trait relationships extend to the tundra biomes and exhibit the same two dimensions of variation detected at the global scale.

    • H. J. D. Thomas
    • , A. D. Bjorkman
    •  & F. T. de Vries

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strategic game payoffs often depend on the state of the environment, which in turn can be influenced by game strategies. Here, Tilman et al. develop a general framework for modeling strategic games with environmental feedbacks and analyze case studies from decision-making, ecology, and economics.

    • Andrew R. Tilman
    • , Joshua B. Plotkin
    •  & Erol Akçay

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An important question in ecology is how much species at higher trophic levels affect lower levels through top-down cascades. Here the authors show through analyses of pelagic size spectra that such cascades are strong in freshwater systems and can also arise in nutrient rich marine systems.

    • Axel G. Rossberg
    • , Ursula Gaedke
    •  & Pavel Kratina

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat loss could affect ecological communities in variable ways depending on its structure. Here, the authors show that contiguous rather than random loss is more damaging to the stability of multitrophic communities, regardless of the fraction of mutualistic interactions within the community.

    • Chris McWilliams
    • , Miguel Lurgi
    •  & Daniel Montoya

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Higher-order interactions occur when one species mediates the interaction between two others. Here, the authors model microbial growth and competition to show that higher-order interactions can arise from tradeoffs in growth traits, leading to neutral coexistence and other complex dynamics.

    • Michael Manhart
    •  & Eugene I. Shakhnovich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Network stability is a central topic in theoretical ecology, with most work focusing on mutualistic or food web networks. Here, the authors explore the stability of microbial networks based on the consumption and exchange of resources, showing that asymmetry in crossfeeding relationships can destabilize networks.

    • Stacey Butler
    •  & James P. O’Dwyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Introduced species may displace ecologically similar native species, but mechanisms are still to be established. Here, Catford et al. provide theoretical evidence of how human-mediated species invasions may overcome competition-colonisation tradeoffs, leading to the local extinction of native species.

    • Jane A. Catford
    • , Michael Bode
    •  & David Tilman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evidence of inverted trophic pyramids in marine food webs has been enigmatic owing to lack of theoretical support. Here, Woodson et al. use metabolic and size-spectra theory to show that inverted pyramids are possible when food webs have generalist predators and consumers with large body sizes.

    • C. Brock Woodson
    • , John R. Schramski
    •  & Samantha B. Joye

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiple environmental drivers of food chain length (FCL) have been proposed, but empirical support has been contradictory. Here the authors argue that the magnitude of vertical energy flux in ecological communities underlies two commonly evaluated drivers of FCL and show that the effects of these two drivers are context-dependent.

    • Colette L. Ward
    •  & Kevin S. McCann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In a changing world, the ability to predict the impact of environmental change on ecological communities is essential. Here, the authors show that by separating species abundances from interaction preferences, they can predict the effects of habitat modification on the structure of weighted species interaction networks, even with limited data.

    • Phillip P. A. Staniczenko
    • , Owen T. Lewis
    •  & Felix Reed-Tsochas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deforestation and edge effects around cleared areas impact forest stability. Here, the authors examine human impacts on Amazonian forest-savanna bistability and show that tree cover bimodality is enhanced in regions close to human activities and is nearly absent in regions unaffected by human activities.

    • Bert Wuyts
    • , Alan R. Champneys
    •  & Joanna I. House

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A central question in theoretical ecology is how diverse species can coexist in communities, and how that coexistence depends on network properties. Here, Grilliet al. quantify the extent of feasible coexistence of empirical networks, showing that it is smaller for trophic than mutualism networks.

    • Jacopo Grilli
    • , Matteo Adorisio
    •  & Amos Maritan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theoretical ecologists have made disparate predictions regarding the relationship between mutualism and stability. Here, Pascual-García and Bastolla develop a theoretical framework showing that model mutualistic interactions promote structural stability when competition is weaker than a threshold depending on network architecture.

    • Alberto Pascual-García
    •  & Ugo Bastolla

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat fragmentation can lead to extinction even when some habitat remains. Here, the authors model the metapopulation dynamics of the Glanville fritillary butterfly and show that persistence depends on spatial configuration and quality of the habitat, as well as on genotype-associated dispersal rate.

    • Ilkka Hanski
    • , Torsti Schulz
    •  & Sami P. Ojanen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Losing animals from food webs could reduce ecosystem function, but drivers of this pattern are difficult to disentangle. With food web simulations, Schneider et al. show that high animal diversity does not release plants from top-down control owing to a balancing effect of increased animal body size.

    • Florian D. Schneider
    • , Ulrich Brose
    •  & Christian Guill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanisms allowing highly biodiverse ecosystems to remain stable are poorly understood. Here, Gravel and colleagues provide theoretical evidence that dispersal of organisms and material modifies species interactions and thus enables highly biodiverse communities to exist.

    • Dominique Gravel
    • , François Massol
    •  & Mathew A. Leibold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A long-standing ecological hypothesis is that complexity should decrease stability in food webs. Here, Jacquet and colleagues analyse over 100 real-world food webs and show that complexity does not decrease stability, but that a high frequency of weak species interactions stabilizes complex food webs.

    • Claire Jacquet
    • , Charlotte Moritz
    •  & Dominique Gravel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social networks have important implications to a variety of ecological and evolutionary processes. Here, Ilany and Akçay develop a social network model and show that inheritance of social contacts leads to networks with properties observed in species such as sleepy lizards and spotted hyenas.

    • Amiyaal Ilany
    •  & Erol Akçay

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Safeguarding existing forests is an important ecological concern but constrains the expansion of farmland to feed the growing world population. Here the authors analyse the option space for future changes in agriculture and diets compatible with a no-deforestation goal.

    • Karl-Heinz Erb
    • , Christian Lauk
    •  & Helmut Haberl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Long-range synchronization of ecological populations separated by distances greater than their dispersal range is thought only to occur via environmental correlations. Here, Noble et al.show that synchronization can also occur beyond these distances, and is described by the Ising universality class.

    • Andrew E. Noble
    • , Jonathan Machta
    •  & Alan Hastings

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reporting earthquakes, including location and focal mechanism, in real time is a challenge. Here, the authors present an approach similar to a web search engine, estimating earthquake parameters by searching a large database within a second, which will potentially enable early warning systems.

    • Jie Zhang
    • , Haijiang Zhang
    •  & Xiong Zhang

  • Article |

    It is unclear how birds differentiate their own eggs from cuckoo’s eggs that parasitize their nests. Here, the authors develop a computer vision tool that simulates how brains process pattern information and show that cuckoos’ hosts have evolved unique egg patterns to distinguish their own eggs from a cuckoo’s.

    • Mary Caswell Stoddard
    • , Rebecca M. Kilner
    •  & Christopher Town

  • Article |

    Available methods to randomize binary matrices with fixed row and column sums are computationally intensive and tend to generate matrix configurations with unequal frequency. Here, the authors introduce a fast and unbiased procedure that requires reduced computational effort and produces uniformly distributed null matrices.

    • Giovanni Strona
    • , Domenico Nappo
    •  & Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz

  • Article |

    Theory predicts trade-offs between investments in precopulatory and postcopulatory sexual traits, but empirical evidence is inconsistent. Here, Lüpold et al.show that the covariance between pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits shifts from positive to negative with increasing male–male competition.

    • Stefan Lüpold
    • , Joseph L. Tomkins
    •  & John L. Fitzpatrick

  • Article |

    A nested pattern of interactions is thought to promote species persistence in mutualistic ecological networks. In this study, Staniczenko et al. introduce a spectral graph measure of nestedness, to show that nestedness is maximally destabilizing and demonstrate that empirical species preferences are not quantitatively nested.

    • Phillip P. A. Staniczenko
    • , Jason C. Kopp
    •  & Stefano Allesina

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