Self-organized biodiversity and species abundance distribution patterns in ecosystems with higher-order interactions

Abstract

Explaining the emergence of self-organized biodiversity and species abundance distribution patterns remians a fundamental challenge in ecology. While classical frameworks, such as neutral theory and models based on pairwise species interactions, have provided valuable insights, they often neglect higher-order interactions (HOIs), whose role in stabilizing ecological communities is increasingly recognized. Here, we extend the Generalized Lotka-Volterra framework to incorporate HOIs and demonstrate that these interactions can enhance ecosystem stability and prevent collapse. Our model exhibits a diverse range of emergent dynamics, including self-sustained oscillations, quasi-periodic (torus) trajectories, and intermittent chaos. Remarkably, it also reproduces empirical species abundance distributions observed across diverse natural communities. These results underscore the critical role of HOIs in structuring biodiversity and offer a broadly applicable theoretical framework for capturing complexity in ecological systems