Abstract
Recently, a theoretical hypothesis was proposed that the coexistence of antagonism and mutualism may stabilize ecological community and even give rise to a positive complexity-stability relationship (interaction-type diversity hypothesis). This hypothesis was derived from an analysis of community model, which was developed based on two specific assumptions about the interaction strengths: those are, (i) different interaction types, antagonism and mutualism, have quantitatively comparable magnitude of effects to population growth; and (ii) interaction strength decreases with increasing interaction links of the same interaction type. However, those assumptions do not necessarily hold in real ecosystems, leaving unclear how robust this hypothesis is. Here, using a model with those two assumptions relaxed, we show (i) that the balance of interaction strength is necessary for the positive complexity effect to arise and (ii) that interaction-type diversity hypothesis may still hold when interaction strength decreases with increasing links of all interaction type for some species.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (D-1102) of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan (MK), a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (#20370009; MK), a Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (#23657019; MK), and a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (#25840164) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (AM).
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This manuscript was submitted for the special feature based on a symposium in Osaka, Japan, held on 12 October 2013.
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Kondoh, M., Mougi, A. Interaction-type diversity hypothesis and interaction strength: the condition for the positive complexity-stability effect to arise. Popul Ecol 57, 21–27 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-014-0475-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-014-0475-9