Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Dynamics of a producer-freeloader ecosystem on the brink of collapse

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dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
dc.contributor Chen, Andrew I.
dc.contributor Sanchez, Alvaro
dc.contributor Dai, Lei
dc.contributor Gore, Jeff
dc.creator Sanchez, Alvaro
dc.creator Dai, Lei
dc.creator Gore, Jeff
dc.creator Chen, Andrew I.
dc.date 2015-08-11T14:23:16Z
dc.date 2015-08-11T14:23:16Z
dc.date 2014-05
dc.date 2013-10
dc.date.accessioned 2023-03-01T18:04:38Z
dc.date.available 2023-03-01T18:04:38Z
dc.identifier 2041-1723
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98065
dc.identifier Chen, Andrew, Alvaro Sanchez, Lei Dai, and Jeff Gore. “Dynamics of a Producer-Freeloader Ecosystem on the Brink of Collapse.” Nat Comms 5 (May 2, 2014).
dc.identifier https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8018-9701
dc.identifier https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4583-8555
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/278656
dc.description Ecosystems can undergo sudden shifts to undesirable states, but recent studies with simple single-species ecosystems have demonstrated that advance warning can be provided by the slowing down of population dynamics near a tipping point. However, it is unclear how this ‘critical slowing down’ will manifest in ecosystems with strong interactions between their components. Here we probe the dynamics of an experimental producer-freeloader ecosystem as it approaches a catastrophic collapse. Surprisingly, the producer population grows in size as the environment deteriorates, highlighting that population size can be a misleading measure of ecosystem stability. By analysing the oscillatory producer-freeloader dynamics for over 100 generations in multiple environmental conditions, we find that the collective ecosystem dynamics slow down as the tipping point is approached. Analysis of the coupled dynamics of interacting populations may therefore be necessary to provide advance warning of collapse in complex communities.
dc.description Templeton Foundation. Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology (Grant RFP-12-07)
dc.description National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant NIH DP2)
dc.description National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R00 GM085279-02)
dc.description National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant PHY-1055154)
dc.description Pew Charitable Trusts
dc.description Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
dc.description Paul Allen Foundation
dc.format application/pdf
dc.language en_US
dc.publisher Nature Publishing Group
dc.relation http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4713
dc.relation Nature Communications
dc.rights Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
dc.rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
dc.source PMC
dc.title Dynamics of a producer-freeloader ecosystem on the brink of collapse
dc.type Article
dc.type http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle


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