IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/thpobi/v162y2025icp13-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Species coexistence as an emergent effect of interacting mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Seidelmann, Thomas
  • Mostaghim, Sanaz

Abstract

Although extensively studied, the maintenance of biodiversity remains a highly debated and investigated topic of contemporary research in ecology. Several studies have quantified the contributions of various coexistence mechanisms to biodiversity. However, often stochastic individual-level interactions are abstracted away, or mechanisms are studied in isolation. The intertwined nature and reciprocal influences between mechanisms, as they arise from individual-level interactions, are therefore rarely considered. We propose a novel mechanistic simulation model grounded in neutral theory to capture and quantify emergent effects arising from such mechanism interactions. Three coexistence mechanisms are supported: storage effect, intransitivity, and resource partitioning. We show that basic neutral dynamics and related models of isolated mechanisms can be replicated. Beyond that, we observe difficult to predict, yet significant emergent effects for mechanism combinations. In some cases, coexistence times could be extended more than tenfold compared to the individual mechanisms’ performances. Our findings suggest that studies of individual coexistence mechanisms might be insufficient and indeed misleading for quantifying their overall impact on biodiversity. The particular combination of mechanisms and their interactions appear to be of vital importance.

Suggested Citation

  • Seidelmann, Thomas & Mostaghim, Sanaz, 2025. "Species coexistence as an emergent effect of interacting mechanisms," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 13-21.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:162:y:2025:i:c:p:13-21
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2024.12.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580924001084
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tpb.2024.12.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:162:y:2025:i:c:p:13-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/theoretical-population-biology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.