PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - David García-Callejas
AU  - Oscar Godoy
AU  - Lisa Buche
AU  - María Hurtado
AU  - Jose B. Lanuza
AU  - Alfonso Allen-Perkins
AU  - Ignasi Bartomeus
TI  - The non-random structure of multi-trophic ecological interactions maximizes species coexistence within ecologically realistic constraints
AID  - 10.1101/2021.11.29.470335
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.11.29.470335
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/30/2021.11.29.470335.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/30/2021.11.29.470335.full
AB  - Theory posits that the persistence of species in ecological communities is shaped by their interactions within and across trophic levels. However, we lack empirical evaluations of how the structure, strength and sign of these interactions drive the potential to coexist in diverse multi-trophic communities. Here we model community feasibility domains, a theoretically-informed measure of coexistence probability, from empirical data on communities comprising more than 50 species for three trophic guilds (plants, pollinators, and herbivores). Although feasibility domains vary depending on the number of trophic guilds considered, we show that higher network connectance leads to lower coexistence opportunities. Moreover, empirical estimations of the feasibility domains were higher with respect to random network structures but lower than a mean-field approach, suggesting that observed interaction structures tend to maximize coexistence within its imposed limits. Our results stress the importance of incorporating empirically-informed interaction structures within and across guilds to better understand how species coexist in diverse multi-trophic communities.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.