Abstract

The foundational concepts behind the persistence of ecological communities have been based on two ecological properties: dynamical stability and feasibility. The former is typically regarded as the capacity of a community to return to an original equilibrium state after a perturbation in species abundances and is usually linked to the strength of interspecific interactions. The latter is the capacity to sustain positive abundances on all its constituent species and is linked to both interspecific interactions and species demographic characteristics. Over the last 40years, theoretical research in ecology has emphasized the search for conditions leading to the dynamical stability of ecological communities, while the conditions leading to feasibility have been overlooked. However, thus far, we have no evidence of whether species interactions are more conditioned by the community's need to be stable or feasible. Here, we introduce novel quantitative methods and use empirical data to investigate the consequences of species interactions on the dynamical stability and feasibility of mutualistic communities. First, we demonstrate that the more nested the species interactions in a community are, the lower the mutualistic strength that the community can tolerate without losing dynamical stability. Second, we show that high feasibility in a community can be reached either with high mutualistic strength or with highly nested species interactions. Third, we find that during the assembly process of a seasonal pollinator community located at The Zackenberg Research Station (northeastern Greenland), a high feasibility is reached through the nested species interactions established between newcomer and resident species. Our findings imply that nested mutualistic communities promote feasibility over stability, which may suggest that the former can be key for community persistence.

Highlights

  • How can ecological communities sustain a large number of species? This is a major question that has greatly intrigued ecologists since the 1920’s (Elton, 1927; Odum, 1953; MacArthur, 1955; Elton, 1958; Margalef, 1968)

  • Dynamical stability asks whether a community will return to an assumed equilibrium state after a perturbation in species abundances, and it is linked to the strength of interspecific interactions (Svirezhev & Logofet, 1983; Logofet, 1993)

  • We studied the general association between stability and feasibility, and how this association is modulated by species interaction networks—summarized by nestedness

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Summary

Introduction

How can ecological communities sustain a large number of species? This is a major question that has greatly intrigued ecologists since the 1920’s (Elton, 1927; Odum, 1953; MacArthur, 1955; Elton, 1958; Margalef, 1968). It is still unclear the extent to which species interactions are more conditioned by the community’s need to be stable or feasible This is important in order to better understand the link between community structure and dynamics, especially as global environmental change is accelerating the rate at which species are removed and introduced into new habitats (Sala et al, 2000; Tylianakis et al, 2008)

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