Hajian-Forooshani Zachary, Rivera-Salinas Iris Saraeny, Perfecto Ivette, Vandermeer John
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany 04103.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Jan 21;122(3):e2407991121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2407991121. Epub 2025 Jan 17.
In ecology, Alan Turing's proposed activation-inhibition mechanism has been abstracted as corresponding to several ecological interaction types to explain pattern formation in ecosystems. Consumer-resource interactions have strong theoretical arguments linking them to both the Turing mechanism and pattern formation, but there is little empirical support to demonstrate these claims. Here, we connect several lines of evidence to support the proposition that consumer-resource interactions can create empirically observed spatial patterns through a mechanism similar to Turing's theory. We propose the existence of a fine-scale demographic spatial pattern (DSP), in which the youngest resources are located at the periphery and oldest in the center of clusters. We find evidence of a DSP in the spatially clustered distribution of arboreal ant nests, whose large-scale spatial patterning has previously been hypothesized to be driven by ant parasitoids. Through a combination of field surveys and analysis of demographic trends, we demonstrate how the DSP structures the interactions between the ant and its parasitoid. To explore the implications of DSP for consumer-resource pattern forming systems generally, we use a spatially explicit consumer-resource model to show how relative diffusion rates of the system shape multiscale spatial patterns that structure the demographic trends of the resource population in predictable ways. This work provides both empirical support for consumer-resource spatial patterns as well as a multiscale approach to understand their spatially explicit population dynamics.
在生态学中，艾伦·图灵提出的激活-抑制机制已被抽象为对应几种生态相互作用类型，以解释生态系统中的模式形成。消费者-资源相互作用有强有力的理论依据将它们与图灵机制和模式形成联系起来，但几乎没有实证支持来证明这些说法。在这里，我们汇集了几条证据来支持这一观点，即消费者-资源相互作用可以通过类似于图灵理论的机制创造出实证观察到的空间模式。我们提出存在一种精细尺度的种群空间模式（DSP），其中最年轻的资源位于集群的外围，最老的资源位于集群的中心。我们在树栖蚁巢的空间集群分布中发现了DSP的证据，其大规模空间模式此前被假设为由蚂蚁寄生虫驱动。通过实地调查和种群趋势分析相结合，我们展示了DSP如何构建蚂蚁与其寄生虫之间的相互作用。为了总体上探索DSP对消费者-资源模式形成系统的影响，我们使用一个空间明确的消费者-资源模型来展示系统的相对扩散率如何塑造多尺度空间模式，这些模式以可预测的方式构建资源种群的种群趋势。这项工作既为消费者-资源空间模式提供了实证支持，也为理解其空间明确的种群动态提供了一种多尺度方法。
