Abstract
Factors maintaining the populations of diverse species that share limited resources or prey remain important issues in ecology. In the present study, I propose that heritable intraspecific variation in prey, which facilitates natural selection, is a key to solve this issue. A mathematical model reveals that diverse genotypes in a prey promote the coexistence of multiple predator species. When two predators share a prey with multiple genotypes, evolution nearly selects the two prey genotypes. Through analysis, I establish a condition of coexistence of such multiple predator–one prey interaction with two genotypes. If each prey type has high defensive capacity against different predator species, stable coexistence is likely to occur. Particularly, interspecific variations of life-history parameters allow the coexistence equilibrium to be stable. In addition, rapid evolution in a prey allows more than two predator species to coexist. Furthermore, mutation tends to stabilize otherwise unstable systems. These results suggest that intraspecific variation in a prey plays a key role in the maintenance of diverse predator species by driving adaptive evolution.
Highlights
Understanding the factors that facilitate coexistence among species is one of the most important issues in ecology [1,2]
Some studies have shown that non-equilibrium dynamics in population densities alone are able to promote the coexistence of two consumers on a single resource based on relative non-linearity in the functional responses of two consumers [14,15]
Earlier works have contended that the coexistence of competing species sharing a limited resource is improbable contrary to observations in nature or in the field [8]
Summary
Understanding the factors that facilitate coexistence among species is one of the most important issues in ecology [1,2]. In nature, diverse competing species coexist [8]. Earlier theoretical studies proposed different mechanisms of coexistence [9]. Few mechanisms do not rely on external factors (e.g., internal non-equilibrium dynamics) [13] to explain coexistence. Some studies have shown that non-equilibrium dynamics in population densities alone are able to promote the coexistence of two consumers on a single resource based on relative non-linearity in the functional responses of two consumers [14,15]. I propose an additional general internal factor, intraspecific diversity in prey, which facilitates adaptive evolution in prey
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