Stochastic Spatial Models in Ecology: A Statistical Physics Approach

Pigolotti, Simone; Cencini, Massimo; Molina, Daniel; Muñoz, Miguel A.

doi:10.1007/s10955-017-1926-4

Cited by 32 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 111 publications

(229 reference statements)

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“…In the presence of currents, the model predicts a value of the exponent significantly larger than one (average α = 1.70, standard deviation σ = 0.68). In the absence of oceanic flows, the model predicts an average α = 1.26, (σ = 0.46), a value compatible with the neutral prediction α = 1 in well-mixed systems (35)(36)(37) and spatially-explicit neutral models (50,56).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 66%

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Ocean currents promote rare species diversity in protists

Martín

Buček

Bourguignon

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Oceans host communities of plankton composed of relatively few abundant species and many rare species. The number of rare protists species in these communities, as estimated in metagenomic studies, decays as a steep power law of their abundance. The ecological factors at the origin of this pattern remain elusive. We propose that oceanic currents affect biodiversity patterns of rare species. To test this hypothesis, we introduce a spatially-explicit coalescence model able to reconstruct the species diversity in a sample of water. Our model predicts, in the presence of oceanic currents, a steeper power law decay of the species abundance distribution and a steeper increase of the number of observed species with sample size. A comparison of two metagenomic studies of planktonic protist communities in oceans and in lakes quantitatively confirms our prediction. Our results support that oceanic currents positively impact the diversity of rare aquatic microbes.Observations contradict this prediction and show that planktonic communities are very diverse (4-7).This violation of the basic principles of niche theory (8,9) has puzzled ecologists for decades (10) and has fostered numerous studies attempting to explain the diversity of plankton (11). One proposal is that variable environments offer more possibilities for specialization of ecological traits (5,(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). Another proposal is that oceanic currents can create barriers reducing competition among species, and therefore promoting species coexistence (19,20). Quantitative analyses also suggest that oceanic currents play a significant role in organizing large-scale diversity patterns (21,22), and that dispersal limitation contributes, alongside with niche specialization, to microbial biodiversity of oceans (23-27).DNA metabarcoding has allowed rapid and extensive measurements of the diversity of aquatic microbial communities, providing new means to study the ecological forces shaping planktonic communities.Metabarcoding studies have revealed that, beside commonly observed species, planktonic communities are characterized by a vast range of rare species. This so-called "rare biosphere" (28, 29) makes up the majority of planktonic species (25,30). The diversity of planktonic species can be quantified by the Species Abundance Distribution (SAD), defined as the frequency P (n) of species with abundance n in a sample. SADs of rare marine protists are qualitatively different from those of abundant species (31,32) and appears to follow a power law distribution P (n) ∝ 1/n α .(1)The exponent α varies significantly among samples, appears weakly correlated with environmental factors, and is significantly larger than 1 on average (33). Diversity patterns in other microbial communities, such as that of the human gut (34), are well described by a form of SAD following the Fisher log series, P (n) ∝ e −c n /n (35-37), as predicted by Hubbell's neutral model (36,38,39). For large communities, the parameter c is very small, so that the distribution is close to a powe...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 66%

“…1). The coalescent formulation has the advantage of describing the dynamics of one sample embedded in a larger ecosystem (49,50).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ocean currents promote rare species diversity in protists

Martín

Buček

Bourguignon

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…It has been shown (Rosindell & Cornell ; Pigolotti et al . ) that realistic SAR emerge in spatially explicit neutral models. Here we show, in light of evidence against neutral community assembly at regional scales (Ostling ), how sublinearity in the SAR can emerge via an explicit diversity‐dependent mechanism.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Metacommunity‐scale biodiversity regulation and the self‐organised emergence of macroecological patterns

2019

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There exist a number of key macroecological patterns whose ubiquity suggests that the spatio‐temporal structure of ecological communities is governed by some universal mechanisms. The nature of these mechanisms, however, remains poorly understood. Here, we probe spatio‐temporal patterns in species richness and community composition using a simple metacommunity assembly model. Despite making no a priori assumptions regarding biotic spatial structure or the distribution of biomass across species, model metacommunities self‐organise to reproduce well‐documented patterns including characteristic species abundance distributions, range size distributions and species area relations. Also in agreement with observations, species richness in our model attains an equilibrium despite continuous species turnover. Crucially, it is in the neighbourhood of the equilibrium that we observe the emergence of these key macroecological patterns. Biodiversity equilibria in models occur due to the onset of ecological structural instability, a population‐dynamical mechanism. This strongly suggests a causal link between local community processes and macroecological phenomena.

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“…1). Such a lattice model has been used in different contexts (Chopard and Droz, 1998) including field theoretic models of biogeography (O'Dwyer et al 2010;Azaele et al 2016;Pigolotti et al 2018). Let us consider a given habitat described as a two-dimensional grid of size L 2 .…”

Section: Master Equation and Mean Field Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat loss-induced tipping points in metapopulations with facilitation

Sardanyés

Piñero

Solé

2018

Preprint

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Habitat loss is known to pervade extinction thresholds in metapopulations. Such thresholds result from a loss of stability that can eventually lead to collapse. Several models have been developed to understand the nature of these transitions and how are they affected by the locality of interactions, fluctuations, or external drivers. Most models consider the impact of grazing or aridity as a control parameter that can trigger sudden shifts, once critical values are reached. Others explore instead the role played by habitat loss and fragmentation. Here we consider a minimal model incorporating facilitation along with habitat destruction, with the aim of understanding how local cooperation and habitat loss interact with each other. An explicit mathematical model is derived, along with a spatially explicit simulation model. It is found that a catastrophic shift is expected for increasing levels of habitat loss, but the breakpoint dynamics becomes continuous when dispersal is local. Under these conditions, spatial patchiness is found and the qualitative change from discontinuous to continuous results from a universal behaviour found in a broad class of nonlinear ecological systems (Weissmann and Shnerb, 2014; Martin et al. PNAS (2015) E1828-E1836). Our results suggest that species exhibiting facilitation and displaying short-range dispersal will be markedly more capable of dealing with habitat destruction, also avoiding catastrophic tipping points.A j A j E i + eA i P (σ; t) .

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Stochastic Spatial Models in Ecology: A Statistical Physics Approach

Cited by 32 publications

References 111 publications

Ocean currents promote rare species diversity in protists

Ocean currents promote rare species diversity in protists

Metacommunity‐scale biodiversity regulation and the self‐organised emergence of macroecological patterns

Habitat loss-induced tipping points in metapopulations with facilitation

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