Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States of America.
Phys Biol. 2019 Apr 9;16(4):045001. doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/ab0946.
Predicting the outcome of species invasion in ecosystems is challenging due to the non-equilibrium nature of the transitions that occur during invasion events. This limits the accuracy of classical ecological models that are typically fit to equilibrium conditions. Here, we address this limitation by solving for the transition dynamics of a cross-feeding community along an analytically tractable manifold defined by the system carrying capacity. We find that continuous changes in invader characteristics and environmental conditions induce discontinuous transitions in the invasion outcomes, resembling phase transitions in physical systems. These sharp transitions are emergent properties of species-resource interactions and relate directly to the extent of overlap in the growth strategy of competing species, with first and second order transitions resulting from complete and partial overlap, respectively. Moreover, we demonstrate that these phase transitions can be modulated by environmental variations to organize species in space.
由于入侵事件发生时的转变是非平衡的，因此预测生态系统中物种入侵的结果具有挑战性。这限制了通常适用于平衡条件的经典生态模型的准确性。在这里，我们通过求解沿系统承载能力定义的可分析流形的交叉馈送群落的转变动态来解决这个限制。我们发现，入侵者特征和环境条件的连续变化会导致入侵结果的不连续转变，类似于物理系统中的相变。这些急剧的转变是物种-资源相互作用的突现性质，与竞争物种的生长策略的重叠程度直接相关，其中一级和二级转变分别由完全和部分重叠引起。此外，我们证明这些相变可以通过环境变化来调节，以在空间中组织物种。
