Abstract
The ecological importance of common species for many ecosystem processes and functions is unquestionably due to their high abundance. Yet, the importance of rare species is much less understood. Here we take a theoretical approach, exposing dynamical models of ecological networks to small perturbations, to explore the dynamical importance of rare and common species. We find that both species types contribute to the recovery of communities following generic perturbations (i.e. perturbations affecting all species). Yet, when perturbations are selective (i.e. affects only one species), perturbations to rare species have the most pronounced effect on community stability. We show that this is due to the strong indirect effects induced by perturbations to rare species. Because indirect effects typically set in at longer timescales, our results indicate that the importance of rare species may be easily overlooked and thus underrated. Hence, our study provides a potential ecological motive for the management and protection of rare species.
Highlights
The ecological importance of common species for many ecosystem processes and functions is unquestionably due to their high abundance
The methods used in these studies are not directly suitable for evaluating the relative dynamical importance of rare and common species, since these type of perturbations may be considered large from a community point of view when applied to some species, and small when applied to others
The dynamical importance of common species, which make up the core of ecological communities, is unquestionably due to their high abundances[1,2,3]
Summary
The ecological importance of common species for many ecosystem processes and functions is unquestionably due to their high abundance. We take a theoretical approach, exposing dynamical models of ecological networks to small perturbations, to explore the dynamical importance of rare and common species We find that both species types contribute to the recovery of communities following generic perturbations (i.e. perturbations affecting all species). Thoroughly comparing the relative dynamical importance of rare and common species in an unbiased way requires a more sophisticated approach To this end, an alternative is to investigate how small perturbations, assumed to be of equal magnitude across species, affects the stability properties of a community. We use a theoretical approach, combining analytical and numerical methods, to investigate the relative importance of rare and common species for the stability properties of ecological network models. Our analytical and numerical modeling results suggest that rare species may be of particular importance for the stability of ecological communities as communities recover more slowly following pulse perturbations to rare than common species, and because stronger indirect effects are induced if rare rather than common species are permanently perturbed
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