Onyeagoziri Chinenye Assumpta, Minoarivelo Henintsoa Onivola, Hui Cang
African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7701, South Africa.
Centre for Invasion Biology, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa.
Plants (Basel). 2025 Jul 10;14(14):2127. doi: 10.3390/plants14142127.
Mutualistic interactions are crucial to the structure and functioning of ecological communities, playing a vital role in maintaining biodiversity amidst environmental perturbations. In studies of meta-networks, which are groups of local networks connected by dispersal, most research has focused on the effect of dispersal on interaction networks of competition and predation, without much attention given to mutualistic interactions. Consequently, the role of different dispersal rates (between local networks and across species) in stability and network structures is not well understood. We present a competition-mutualism model for meta-networks where mutualistic interactions follow a type II functional response, to investigate stability and species abundance dynamics under varying dispersal scenarios. We specifically assess the impact of mutualism and dispersal heterogeneity, both between local networks and across species, on the structure and stability of meta-networks. We find that mutualistic meta-networks exhibit greater stability, higher total abundance, lower species unevenness, and greater nestedness compared to meta-networks with only competition interactions. Although dispersal heterogeneity across species exerts some influence, dispersal heterogeneity between local networks mainly drives the patterns observed: it reduces total abundance, increases unevenness, and diminishes compositional similarity across the meta-network. These results highlight the pivotal role of both mutualism and spatial dispersal structure in shaping ecological networks. Our work advances understanding of how mutualistic interactions and dispersal dynamics interact to influence biodiversity and stability in complex ecosystems.
互利共生相互作用对于生态群落的结构和功能至关重要，在环境扰动下维持生物多样性方面发挥着关键作用。在对元网络（通过扩散连接的局部网络组）的研究中，大多数研究集中在扩散对竞争和捕食相互作用网络的影响上，而对互利共生相互作用关注较少。因此，不同扩散速率（局部网络之间以及物种之间）在稳定性和网络结构中的作用尚未得到很好的理解。我们提出了一个用于元网络的竞争 - 互利共生模型，其中互利共生相互作用遵循II型功能反应，以研究不同扩散情景下的稳定性和物种丰度动态。我们特别评估了局部网络之间以及物种之间的互利共生和扩散异质性对元网络结构和稳定性的影响。我们发现，与仅具有竞争相互作用的元网络相比，互利共生元网络表现出更高的稳定性、更高的总丰度、更低的物种不均匀性和更高的嵌套性。虽然物种间的扩散异质性有一定影响，但局部网络之间的扩散异质性主要驱动了观察到的模式：它降低了总丰度，增加了不均匀性，并减少了整个元网络的组成相似性。这些结果突出了互利共生和空间扩散结构在塑造生态网络中的关键作用。我们的工作推进了对互利共生相互作用和扩散动态如何相互作用以影响复杂生态系统中生物多样性和稳定性的理解。
