The persistence of bipartite ecological communities with Lotka–Volterra dynamics

• Published in: Journal of mathematical biology Vol. 89; no. 2; p. 24
• Main Authors: Dopson, Matt, Emary, Clive
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.08.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animals; Applications of Mathematics; Community ecology; Consumers; Ecosystem; Food Chain; Guilds; Mathematical and Computational Biology; Mathematical Concepts; Mathematics; Mathematics and Statistics; Models, Biological; Parameter identification; Phase diagrams; Phase transitions; Population Dynamics - statistics & numerical data; Volterra integral equations; Lotka–Volterra equations; Bipartite ecological network; Random matrix; Dynamical cavity method; 60B20; 37H30; Population dynamics; 92D40; Phase transition
• ISSN: 0303-6812; 1432-1416; 1432-1416
• DOI: 10.1007/s00285-024-02120-w

The assembly and persistence of ecological communities can be understood as the result of the interaction and migration of species. Here we study a single community subject to migration from a species pool in which inter-specific interactions are organised according to a bipartite network. Considering the dynamics of species abundances to be governed by generalised Lotka–Volterra equations, we extend work on unipartite networks to we derive exact results for the phase diagram of this model. Focusing on antagonistic interactions, we describe factors that influence the persistence of the two guilds, locate transitions to multiple-attractor and unbounded phases, as well as identifying a region of parameter space in which consumers are essentially absent in the local community.