RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Overcome Competitive Exclusion in Ecosystems
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 312645
DO 10.1101/312645
A1 Xin Wang
A1 Yang-Yu Liu
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/02/312645.abstract
AB Explaining biodiversity in nature is a fundamental problem in ecology. One great challenge is embodied in the so-called competitive exclusion principle1–4: the number of species in steady coexistence cannot exceed the number of resources4–7. In the past five decades, various mechanisms have been proposed to overcome the limit on diversity set by the competitive exclusion principle8–25. Yet, none of the existing mechanisms can generically overcome competitive exclusion at steady state4,26. Here we show that by forming chasing triplets in the predation process among the consumers and resources, the number of coexisting species of consumers can exceed that of resources at steady state, naturally breaking the competitive exclusion principle. Our model can be broadly applicable to explain the biodiversity of many consumer-resource ecosystems and deepen our understanding of biodiversity in nature.