Phenomenology and dynamics of competitive ecosystems beyond the niche-neutral regimes

Abstract

Structure, composition and stability of ecological populations are shaped by the inter- and intra-species interactions within these communities. It remains to be fully understood how the interplay of these interactions with other factors, such as immigration, control the structure, diversity and the long term stability of ecological systems in the presence of noise and fluctuations. We address this problem using a minimal model of interacting multi-species ecological communities that incorporates competition, immigration and demographic noise. We find that the complete phase diagram exhibits rich behavior with multiple regimes that go beyond the classical 'niche' and 'neutral' regimes, extending and modifying the 'neutral-like' or 'niche-like' dichotomy. In particular, we observe novel regimes that cannot be characterized as either 'niche' or 'neutral' where a multimodal species abundance distribution is observed. We characterize the transitions between the different regimes and show how they arise from the underlying kinetics of the species turnover, extinction and invasion. Our model serves as a minimal null model of noisy competitive ecological systems, against which more complex models that include factors such as mutations and environmental noise can be compared.