IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v7y2016i1d10.1038_ncomms12285.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

High-order species interactions shape ecosystem diversity

Author

Listed:
  • Eyal Bairey

    (Technion—Israel Institute of Technology)

  • Eric D. Kelsic

    (Harvard Medical School
    Present address: Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.)

  • Roy Kishony

    (Harvard Medical School
    Technion—Israel Institute of Technology)

Abstract

Classical theory shows that large communities are destabilized by random interactions among species pairs, creating an upper bound on ecosystem diversity. However, species interactions often occur in high-order combinations, whereby the interaction between two species is modulated by one or more other species. Here, by simulating the dynamics of communities with random interactions, we find that the classical relationship between diversity and stability is inverted for high-order interactions. More specifically, while a community becomes more sensitive to pairwise interactions as its number of species increases, its sensitivity to three-way interactions remains unchanged, and its sensitivity to four-way interactions actually decreases. Therefore, while pairwise interactions lead to sensitivity to the addition of species, four-way interactions lead to sensitivity to species removal, and their combination creates both a lower and an upper bound on the number of species. These findings highlight the importance of high-order species interactions in determining the diversity of natural ecosystems.

Suggested Citation

  • Eyal Bairey & Eric D. Kelsic & Roy Kishony, 2016. "High-order species interactions shape ecosystem diversity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-7, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12285
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12285
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12285
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms12285?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Shiliang & Liu, Xiang & He, Qiang & Zhou, Shurong, 2022. "Higher-order interactions on disease transmission can reverse the dilution effect or weaken the amplification effect to unimodal pattern," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 474(C).
    2. Gerrit Ansmann & Tobias Bollenbach, 2021. "Building clone-consistent ecosystem models," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Papanikolaou, Nikos & Lambiotte, Renaud & Vaccario, Giacomo, 2023. "Fragmentation from group interactions: A higher-order adaptive voter model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 630(C).
    4. González, Cecilia, 2023. "Evolution of the concept of ecological integrity and its study through networks," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 476(C).
    5. Lin Wang & Xi Zhang & Chenwang Tang & Pengcheng Li & Runtao Zhu & Jing Sun & Yunfeng Zhang & Hua Cui & Jiajia Ma & Xinyu Song & Weiwen Zhang & Xiang Gao & Xiaozhou Luo & Lingchong You & Ye Chen & Zhuo, 2022. "Engineering consortia by polymeric microbial swarmbots," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    6. Ramasamy, Mohanasubha & Devarajan, Subhasri & Kumarasamy, Suresh & Rajagopal, Karthikeyan, 2022. "Effect of higher-order interactions on synchronization of neuron models with electromagnetic induction," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 434(C).
    7. Alicia Sanchez-Gorostiaga & Djordje Bajić & Melisa L Osborne & Juan F Poyatos & Alvaro Sanchez, 2019. "High-order interactions distort the functional landscape of microbial consortia," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(12), pages 1-34, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12285. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    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.