Trade-off shapes diversity in eco-evolutionary dynamics

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Abstract

We introduce an Interaction- and Trade-off-based Eco-Evolutionary Model (ITEEM), in which species are competing in a well-mixed system, and their evolution in interaction trait space is subject to a life-history trade-off between replication rate and competitive ability. We demonstrate that the shape of the trade-off has a fundamental impact on eco-evolutionary dynamics, as it imposes four phases of diversity, including a sharp phase transition. Despite its minimalism, ITEEM produces a remarkable range of patterns of eco-evolutionary dynamics that are observed in experimental and natural systems. Most notably we find self-organization towards structured communities with high and sustained diversity, in which competing species form interaction cycles similar to rock-paper-scissors games.

Data availability

The source code of the model is freely available at https://github.com/BioinformaticsBiophysicsUDE/ITEEM

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Farnoush Farahpour

Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biophysics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

For correspondence
farnoush.farahpour@uni-due.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4510-8483
Mohammadkarim Saeedghalati

Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biophysics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3387-6263
Verena Brauer

Biofilm Centre, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Daniel Hoffmann

Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biophysics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

For correspondence
daniel.hoffmann@uni-due.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2973-7869

Funding

No external funding was received for this work.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.