Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA.
Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA.
Nature. 2023 Jun;618(7967):986-991. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06154-w. Epub 2023 Jun 7.
Life history, the schedule of when and how fast organisms grow, die and reproduce, is a critical axis along which species differ from each other. In parallel, competition is a fundamental mechanism that determines the potential for species coexistence. Previous models of stochastic competition have demonstrated that large numbers of species can persist over long timescales, even when competing for a single common resource, but how life history differences between species increase or decrease the possibility of coexistence and, conversely, whether competition constrains what combinations of life history strategies complement each other remain open questions. Here we show that specific combinations of life history strategy optimize the persistence times of species competing for a single resource before one species overtakes its competitors. This suggests that co-occurring species would tend to have such complementary life history strategies, which we demonstrate using empirical data for perennial plants.
生物的生活史，即其生长、死亡和繁殖的时间和速度安排，是物种之间差异的一个关键方面。与此同时，竞争是决定物种共存潜力的基本机制。先前关于随机竞争的模型表明，即使物种在争夺单一的共同资源，大量的物种也可以在很长的时间尺度上持续存在，但物种之间的生活史差异如何增加或减少共存的可能性，以及相反地，竞争是否限制了互补的生活史策略组合，这些仍然是悬而未决的问题。在这里，我们表明，在一个物种超越其竞争者之前，具有特定生活史策略组合的物种在竞争单一资源时会优化物种的持续时间。这表明共存的物种往往具有互补的生活史策略，我们使用多年生植物的实证数据证明了这一点。
