Over 50 years ago, Robert May proposed that increased complexity in ecological communities—measured by species richness, interaction strength, and connectivity—leads to instability. This sparked debate since natural communities are both complex and stable. This talk presents two complementary approaches to this paradox.
First, a theoretical framework incorporates population structure into stability analysis. Unlike traditional models assuming homogeneous populations, this approach accounts for differences across life stages and their specific interactions. The structured community matrix (SCM) shows that while competition within the same stage may destabilize communities, cross-stage predator-prey interactions can enhance stability, even in networks otherwise unstable without structure.
Second, an ongoing global study of about 3 million species interactions across biomes empirically supports May’s complexity-stability relationship. Defining communities using bioclimatic criteria reveals real networks have emergent features—modularity, compartmentalization, heavy-tailed degree distributions—that promote stability, consistent with ecological theory.
Together, these perspectives suggest ecological stability is an emergent property of internal organization and life-history traits of populations.
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