Understanding the mechanisms driving species biogeography and biodiversity remains a major challenge in phytoplankton ecology. Using a model of two phytoplankton species with a gleaner-opportunist trade-off and competing for light and a limiting …
1. Global concern about human impact on biological diversity has triggered an intense research agenda on drivers and consequences of biodiversity change in parallel with international policy seeking to conserve biodiversity and associated ecosystem …
Spatial structure can decisively influence the way evolutionary processes unfold. To date, several methods have been used to study evolution in spatial systems, including population genetics, quantitative genetics, moment-closure approximations, and …
Habitat destruction, characterized by patch loss and fragmentation, is a major driving force of species extinction, and understanding its mechanisms has become a central issue in biodiversity conservation. Numerous studies have explored the effect of …
Habitat destruction, characterized by patch loss and fragmentation, is a key driver of biodiversity loss. There has been some progress in the theory of spatial food webs; however, to date, practically nothing is known about how patch configurational …
Habitat destruction, characterized by habitat loss and fragmentation, is a key driver of species extinction in spatial extended communities. Recently, there has been some progress in the theory of spatial food webs, however to date practically little …
The boundary between mud flat and coastal wetland ecosystems is highly dynamic environment. We introduce a simple conceptual model for this ecosystem, which demonstrates that the interaction between tidal flooding and habitat elevation is able to produce an ecotone with similar characteristics to that observed in empirical studies. In particular, the transition from mud flat to vegetated state is locally abrupt, occurring at a critical threshold elevation, but, on broader spatial scales can occur over a range of elevations determined by the variability in high tide water levels. Additionally, the model shows the potential for regime shifts.
Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba)—one of the most abundant animal species on Earth—exhibits a five to six year population cycle, with oscillations in biomass exceeding one order of magnitude. Previous studies have postulated that the krill cycle is …
Species within a habitat are not uniformly distributed. However this aspect of community structure, which is fundamental to many conservation activities, is neglected in the majority of models of food web assembly. To address this issue, we introduce …
The interplay of population dynamics and evolution within ecological communities has been of long-standing interest for ecologists and can give rise to evolutionary cycles, e.g. taxon cycles. Evolutionary cycling was intensely studied in small …