Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems.
Ecosystems are commonly organized into trophic levels-organisms that occupy the same level in a food chain (e.g., plants, herbivores, carnivores). A fundamental question in theoretical ecology is how the interplay between trophic structure, diversity, and competition shapes the properties of ecosyst...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2024-02-01
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| Series: | PLoS Computational Biology |
| Online Access: | https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011675&type=printable |
| _version_ | 1827013077553381376 |
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| author | Zhijie Feng Robert Marsland Jason W Rocks Pankaj Mehta |
| author_facet | Zhijie Feng Robert Marsland Jason W Rocks Pankaj Mehta |
| author_sort | Zhijie Feng |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Ecosystems are commonly organized into trophic levels-organisms that occupy the same level in a food chain (e.g., plants, herbivores, carnivores). A fundamental question in theoretical ecology is how the interplay between trophic structure, diversity, and competition shapes the properties of ecosystems. To address this problem, we analyze a generalized Consumer Resource Model with three trophic levels using the zero-temperature cavity method and numerical simulations. We derive the corresponding mean-field cavity equations and show that intra-trophic diversity gives rise to an effective "emergent competition" term between species within a trophic level due to feedbacks mediated by other trophic levels. This emergent competition gives rise to a crossover from a regime of top-down control (populations are limited by predators) to a regime of bottom-up control (populations are limited by primary producers) and is captured by a simple order parameter related to the ratio of surviving species in different trophic levels. We show that our theoretical results agree with empirical observations, suggesting that the theoretical approach outlined here can be used to understand complex ecosystems with multiple trophic levels. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T22:00:19Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-ab8becfa513d4a1782e2af95a75f9045 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1553-734X 1553-7358 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-02-18T13:48:12Z |
| publishDate | 2024-02-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS Computational Biology |
| spelling | doaj.art-ab8becfa513d4a1782e2af95a75f90452024-10-30T05:31:07ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS Computational Biology1553-734X1553-73582024-02-01202e101167510.1371/journal.pcbi.1011675Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems.Zhijie FengRobert MarslandJason W RocksPankaj MehtaEcosystems are commonly organized into trophic levels-organisms that occupy the same level in a food chain (e.g., plants, herbivores, carnivores). A fundamental question in theoretical ecology is how the interplay between trophic structure, diversity, and competition shapes the properties of ecosystems. To address this problem, we analyze a generalized Consumer Resource Model with three trophic levels using the zero-temperature cavity method and numerical simulations. We derive the corresponding mean-field cavity equations and show that intra-trophic diversity gives rise to an effective "emergent competition" term between species within a trophic level due to feedbacks mediated by other trophic levels. This emergent competition gives rise to a crossover from a regime of top-down control (populations are limited by predators) to a regime of bottom-up control (populations are limited by primary producers) and is captured by a simple order parameter related to the ratio of surviving species in different trophic levels. We show that our theoretical results agree with empirical observations, suggesting that the theoretical approach outlined here can be used to understand complex ecosystems with multiple trophic levels.https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011675&type=printable |
| spellingShingle | Zhijie Feng Robert Marsland Jason W Rocks Pankaj Mehta Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems. PLoS Computational Biology |
| title | Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems. |
| title_full | Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems. |
| title_fullStr | Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems. |
| title_short | Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems. |
| title_sort | emergent competition shapes top down versus bottom up control in multi trophic ecosystems |
| url | https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011675&type=printable |
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