scholarly journals Interaction capacity underpins community diversity

Author(s):  
Masayuki Ushio

AbstractHow patterns in community diversity emerge is a long-standing question in ecology. Theories and experimental studies suggested that community diversity and interspecific interactions are interdependent. However, evidence from multitaxonomic, high-diversity ecological communities is lacking because of practical challenges in characterizing speciose communities and their interactions. Here, I analyzed time-varying causal interaction networks that were reconstructed using 1197 species, DNA-based ecological time series taken from experimental rice plots and empirical dynamic modeling, and show that species interaction capacity, namely, the sum of interaction strength that a single species gives and receives, underpins community diversity. As community diversity increases, the number of interactions increases exponentially but the mean species interaction capacity of a community becomes saturated, weakening interaction among species. These patterns are explicitly modeled with simple mathematical equations, based on which I propose the “interaction capacity hypothesis”, namely, that species interaction capacity and network connectance are proximate drivers of community diversity. Furthermore, I show that total DNA concentrations and temperature influence species interaction capacity and connectance nonlinearly, explaining a large proportion of diversity patterns observed in various systems. The interaction capacity hypothesis enables mechanistic explanations of community diversity, and how species interaction capacity is determined is a key question in ecology.

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel A. Fronhofer ◽  
Jan Klecka ◽  
Carlos J. Melián ◽  
Florian Altermatt

Dispersal, and the underlying movement behaviour, are processes of pivotal importance for understanding and predicting metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics. Generally, dispersal decisions are non-random and rely on information, such as the presence of conspecifics. However, studies on metacommunities that include interspecific interactions generally disregard information use. Therefore, it remains unclear whether and how dispersal in metacommunities is informed and whether rules derived from single-species contexts can be scaled up to (meta-)communities. Using experimental protist metacommunities, we show how dispersal and movement are informed and adjusted by the strength of inter-specific interactions. We found that predicting informed movement and dispersal in metacommunities requires knowledge on behavioural responses to intra- and inter-specific interaction strength. Consequently, metacommunity dynamics inferred directly from single-species metapopulations without taking inter-specific interactions into account are likely flawed. Our work identifies the significance of information use for understanding metacommunity dynamics, stability and the coexistence and distribution of species.


2009 ◽  
Vol 87 (11) ◽  
pp. 1024-1031 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. T. Gray ◽  
J. T. Detwiler ◽  
D. J. Minchella

Animal aggregation to environmental cues provides opportunities for parasite transmission between individual hosts of the same or different species. Better characterization of host behavioral responses to environmental stimuli in the absence and presence of parasites will improve our understanding of how foci of transmission form. The behavioral response patterns of two co-occurring freshwater snail species ( Lymnaea elodes (Say, 1821) and Helisoma trivolvis (Say, 1817) (=  Planorbella trivolvis (Say, 1817))) were assessed in response to three environmental stimuli (crayfish (genus Orconectes  Cope, 1872) carrion, vegetation, or temperature gradient). Experiments were conducted with single species and species interactions. In addition, parasitized L. elodes were included in a single-species experiment and a species-interaction experiment. Snail species differed in the direction and magnitude of their responses to the environmental stimuli. Species interactions did not affect the responses to two of the stimuli for either species; however, interspecific interactions affected the response to high temperature in both species. Behavioral responses were altered in the presence of parasites for both the infected and uninfected hosts, suggesting parasitism is an important biotic factor in animal movement. This experimental study indicates co-occurring species respond to environmental factors in different ways. Furthermore, species interactions and parasitism within a guild can have strong effects on animal movement and potentially on parasite transmission.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Welsh ◽  
Mirjana Markovic ◽  
David Thieltges ◽  
Jaap van der Meer

Ecological communities can affect transmission pathways of parasites and pathogens, ultimately affecting disease dynamics. While the community composition of less competent decoy hosts is known to affect diseases in focal hosts, it remains poorly understood whether such diversity effects also exist when non-host organisms remove free-living parasite stages, e.g. by predation. In response surface design laboratory experiments, we investigated non-host diversity effects on the removal of cercarial stages of trematodes, ubiquitous parasites in aquatic ecosystems. In all three combinations of two non-hosts at four density levels, the addition of a second non-host did not generally result in increased parasite removal but neutralised, amplified or reduced the parasite removal exerted by the first non-host, depending on the density. These complex non-host diversity effects were probably driven by intra- and interspecific interactions and suggest the need to integrate non-host diversity effects in understanding the links between community diversity and disease risk.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel E Leventhal ◽  
Liyu Wang ◽  
Roger D Kouyos

Biodiversity maintenance and community evolution depend on the species interaction network. The "diversity-stability debate" has revealed that the complex interaction structure within real-world ecosystems determines how ecological communities respond to environmental changes, but can have opposite effects depending on the community type. Here we quantify the influence of shifts on community diversity and stability at both the species level and the community level. We use interaction networks from 19 real-world mutualistic communities and simulate shifts to antagonism. We demonstrate that both the placement of the shifting species in the community, as well as the structure of the interaction network as a whole contribute to stability and diversity maintenance under shifts. Our results suggest that the interaction structure of natural communities generally enhances community robustness against small ecological and evolutionary changes, but exacerbates the consequences of large changes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 650 ◽  
pp. 269-287
Author(s):  
WC Thaxton ◽  
JC Taylor ◽  
RG Asch

As the effects of climate change become more pronounced, variation in the direction and magnitude of shifts in species occurrence in space and time may disrupt interspecific interactions in ecological communities. In this study, we examined how the fall and winter ichthyoplankton community in the Newport River Estuary located inshore of Pamlico Sound in the southeastern United States has responded to environmental variability over the last 27 yr. We relate the timing of estuarine ingress of 10 larval fish species to changes in sea surface temperature (SST), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, wind strength and phenology, and tidal height. We also examined whether any species exhibited trends in ingress phenology over the last 3 decades. Species varied in the magnitude of their responses to all of the environmental variables studied, but most shared a common direction of change. SST and northerly wind strength had the largest impact on estuarine ingress phenology, with most species ingressing earlier during warm years and delaying ingress during years with strong northerly winds. As SST warms in the coming decades, the average date of ingress of some species (Atlantic croaker Micropogonias undulatus, summer flounder Paralichthys dentatus, pinfish Lagodon rhomboides) is projected to advance on the order of weeks to months, assuming temperatures do not exceed a threshold at which species can no longer respond through changes in phenology. These shifts in ingress could affect larval survival and growth since environmental conditions in the estuarine and pelagic nursery habitats of fishes also vary seasonally.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangjun Dai ◽  
Suli Wang ◽  
Weizhi Xiong ◽  
Ni Li

Abstract We propose and study a stochastic delay single-species population system in polluted environment with psychological effect and pulse toxicant input. We establish sufficient conditions for the extinction, nonpersistence in the mean, weak persistence, and strong persistence of the single-species population and obtain the threshold value between extinction and weak persistence. Finally, we confirm the efficiency of the main results by numerical simulations.


Author(s):  
Alexander Vakhrushev ◽  
Abdellah Kharicha ◽  
Ebrahim Karimi-Sibaki ◽  
Menghuai Wu ◽  
Andreas Ludwig ◽  
...  

AbstractA numerical study is presented that deals with the flow in the mold of a continuous slab caster under the influence of a DC magnetic field (electromagnetic brakes (EMBrs)). The arrangement and geometry investigated here is based on a series of previous experimental studies carried out at the mini-LIMMCAST facility at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The magnetic field models a ruler-type EMBr and is installed in the region of the ports of the submerged entry nozzle (SEN). The current article considers magnet field strengths up to 441 mT, corresponding to a Hartmann number of about 600, and takes the electrical conductivity of the solidified shell into account. The numerical model of the turbulent flow under the applied magnetic field is implemented using the open-source CFD package OpenFOAM®. Our numerical results reveal that a growing magnitude of the applied magnetic field may cause a reversal of the flow direction at the meniscus surface, which is related the formation of a “multiroll” flow pattern in the mold. This phenomenon can be explained as a classical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) effect: (1) the closure of the induced electric current results not primarily in a braking Lorentz force inside the jet but in an acceleration in regions of previously weak velocities, which initiates the formation of an opposite vortex (OV) close to the mean jet; (2) this vortex develops in size at the expense of the main vortex until it reaches the meniscus surface, where it becomes clearly visible. We also show that an acceleration of the meniscus flow must be expected when the applied magnetic field is smaller than a critical value. This acceleration is due to the transfer of kinetic energy from smaller turbulent structures into the mean flow. A further increase in the EMBr intensity leads to the expected damping of the mean flow and, consequently, to a reduction in the size of the upper roll. These investigations show that the Lorentz force cannot be reduced to a simple damping effect; depending on the field strength, its action is found to be topologically complex.


Author(s):  
Phan Thành Nam ◽  
Marcin Napiórkowski

AbstractWe consider the homogeneous Bose gas on a unit torus in the mean-field regime when the interaction strength is proportional to the inverse of the particle number. In the limit when the number of particles becomes large, we derive a two-term expansion of the one-body density matrix of the ground state. The proof is based on a cubic correction to Bogoliubov’s approximation of the ground state energy and the ground state.


1980 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Okabe ◽  
Y. Yokoyama

This paper treats the motion of a particle on a vibratory feeder whose track has directional characteristic in repulsive motion, for examples, obliquely bristled track, obliquely sliced track and so on. Under some assumptions, the practical equation for predicting the mean conveying velocity is shown and the relations between conveying condition and the mean conveying velocity are clarified theoretically. These relations are shown in various diagrams. Referring these diagrams, the optimum conveying conditions are discussed also. The theoretical results show that the mean conveying velocity is considerably larger than that of the ordinary feeder. The theoretical results are confirmed by experimental studies.


2005 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. 851-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J Trumble ◽  
Michael A Castellini

To determine the effects of diet mixing on digestive performance, harbour seals (Phoca vitulina L., 1758) were offered either pure diets of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii Valenciennes, 1847) or walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma (Pallas, 1814)) or a 1:1 mix of herring and pollock. Regardless of diet, retention time decreased approximately 40% as intake quadrupled. The mean apparent digestible dry matter (ADDM) was greatest on mixed diets during low feeding frequency trials; ADDM during high feeding frequency trials was significantly reduced as intake increased for animals on the single-species (pollock or herring) diets. As intake increased, up to 45% more digestible energy was assimilated from the mixed diet than from either single-species diet. The findings of this study suggest that a mixed diet consisting of prey differing in lipid and protein amounts increased digestible energy intake in harbour seals. Our measures of intake and ADDM in harbour seals revealed digestive flexibility and indicated that digestion in harbour seals was more efficient on a mixed diet.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document