Abstract
It is predicted that ecological communities will become unstable with increasing species numbers and subsequent interspecific interactions; however, this is contrary to how natural ecosystems with diverse species respond to changes in species numbers. This contradiction has steered ecologists toward exploring what underlying processes allow complex communities to stabilize even through varying pressures. In this study, a food web model is used to show an overlooked role of interference among multiple predator species in solving this complexity–stability problem. Predator interference in large communities weakens species interactions due to a reduction in consumption rates by prey-sharing species in the presence of predators in response to territorial and aggressive behavior, thereby playing a key stabilizing role in communities. Especially when interspecific interference is strong and a community has diverse species and dense species interactions, stabilization is likely to work and creates a positive complexity–stability relationship within a community. The clear positive effect of complexity on community stability is not reflected by/intraspecific interference, emphasizing the key role of interspecific interference among multiple predator species in maintaining larger systems.
Highlights
It is predicted that ecological communities will become unstable with increasing species numbers and subsequent interspecific interactions; this is contrary to how natural ecosystems with diverse species respond to changes in species numbers
To observe the pure effect of interspecific interference on community stability, it was assumed that no intraspecific interference took place in this analysis (α = 0, β > 0)
Interspecific interference among multiple predator species plays a key role in creating a positive complexity effect on community stability
Summary
It is predicted that ecological communities will become unstable with increasing species numbers and subsequent interspecific interactions; this is contrary to how natural ecosystems with diverse species respond to changes in species numbers. These findings suggest that weak interaction is a general factor in stabilizing complex c ommunities[29] Another direction that is often overlooked in mathematical models is a non-linear approach to measuring functional responses of species interactions[30]. A previous study demonstrated that a type-III functional response promotes an increased number of species interactions; in a type-III response, predation rates increase with increasing prey density and are saturated at a high prey d ensity[33] This response promotes a level of connectance in the greater food web that increases community stability. Previous studies have shown that functional response variation plays a key role in complexity–stability relationships, they mainly focused on the densitydependent manner of species pairs with direct interaction. The question of how interaction modifications due to indirectly interacting species affect complexity–stability remains unanswered
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