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(Referência obtida automaticamente do Google Scholar, por meio da informação sobre o financiamento pela FAPESP e o número do processo correspondente, incluída na publicação pelos autores.)

Model ecosystems with random nonlinear interspecies interactions

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Autor(es):
Santos‚ D.O.C. ; Fontanari‚ J.F.
Número total de Autores: 2
Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
Fonte: Physical Review E; v. 70, n. 6, p. 061914, 2004.
Resumo

The principle of competitive exclusion in ecology establishes that two species living together cannot occupy the same ecological niche. Here we present a model ecosystem in which the species are described by a series of phenotypic characters and the strength of the competition between two species is given by a nondecreasing (modulating) function of the number of common characters. Using analytical tools of statistical mechanics we find that the ecosystem diversity, defined as the fraction of species that coexist at equilibrium, decreases as the complexity (i.e., number of characters) of the species increases, regardless of the modulating function. By considering both selective and random elimination of the links in the community web, we show that ecosystems composed of simple species are more robust than those composed of complex species. In addition, we show that the puzzling result that there exists either rich or poor ecosystems for a linear modulating function is not typical of communities in which the interspecies interactions are determined by a complementarity rule. (AU)

Processo FAPESP: 99/09644-9 - Evolução molecular teórica
Beneficiário:José Fernando Fontanari
Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Temático