Suweis Samir, Ferraro Francesco, Grilletta Christian, Azaele Sandro, Maritan Amos
University of Padova, Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy "G. Galilei", Padova, Italy.
INFN, Sezione di Padova, via Marzolo 8, Padova 35131, Italy.
Phys Rev Lett. 2024 Oct 18;133(16):167101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.167101.
In this Letter, we explore the dynamics of species abundances within ecological communities using the generalized Lotka-Volterra (GLV) model. At variance with previous approaches, we present an analysis of GLV dynamics with temporal stochastic fluctuations in interaction strengths between species. We develop a dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) tailored for scenarios with colored noise interactions, which we term annealed disorder, and simple functional responses. Our DMFT framework enables us to show that annealed disorder acts as an effective environmental noise; i.e., every species experiences a time-dependent environment shaped by the collective presence of all other species. We then derive analytical predictions for the species abundance distribution that well match empirical observations. Our results suggest that annealed disorder in interaction strengths favors species coexistence and leads to a large pool of very rare species in the systems, supporting the insurance theory of biodiversity. This Letter offers new insights not only into the modeling of large ecosystem dynamics but also proposes novel methodologies for examining ecological systems.
在本信函中，我们使用广义洛特卡 - 沃尔泰拉（GLV）模型探索生态群落中物种丰度的动态变化。与先前的方法不同，我们对物种间相互作用强度存在时间随机波动情况下的GLV动态进行了分析。我们针对具有有色噪声相互作用（我们称之为退火无序）和简单功能响应的情景，开发了一种动力学平均场理论（DMFT）。我们的DMFT框架使我们能够表明，退火无序起到了有效的环境噪声作用；也就是说，每个物种都经历着由所有其他物种的集体存在所塑造的随时间变化的环境。然后，我们推导了与经验观测结果非常匹配的物种丰度分布的解析预测。我们的结果表明，相互作用强度的退火无序有利于物种共存，并导致系统中存在大量非常稀有的物种，这支持了生物多样性的保险理论。本信函不仅为大型生态系统动态建模提供了新见解，还提出了用于研究生态系统的新方法。
