Ecology Letters
Why does coral bleaching occur regularly, at a cost to the coral host? Here, we use a theoretical model to explore the possibility that coral bleaching is a mechanism for their obligate, algal symbionts to infect the next generation of hosts. We show that under this model, shifts towards more bleaching-tolerant symbioses may not be a result of climate...
We propose to adapt niche and fitness differences from modern coexistence theory and apply them to species interactions over time. We investigated how the exploitation of a biotic resource (plant) by phytophagous arthropods affects their interactions and found that species switch between intra- and interspecific facilitation, and strong and weak competition....
Species-to-species and species-to-environment interactions play a crucial role in community dynamics. However, disentangling these interactions in species-rich communities is challenging due to the ‘curse of dimensionality’. We have developed a novel approach to overcoming this problem, which reveals highly individualistic dynamics in coral reef fish...
Foods are complex mixtures of organic and inorganic components that differ in digestibility. Animals often need to mix various foods to fulfill their specific nutritional needs. Our goal was to reveal the complex nutritional and functional considerations underlying a simple diet. Using field and laboratory experiments we found that desert isopods...
Modern coexistence theory (MCT) typically focuses on two-species competition or communities with particular symmetry. Here we study the three-species Lotka–Volterra competition model, including both pairwise coexistence and founder control. We expand MCT by proposing a third quantity beyond niche and fitness differences: cyclic asymmetry, which can...