Stability of two-species communities: Drift, environmental stochasticity, storage effect and selection

Abstract

The dynamics of two competing species in a finite size community is one of the most studied problems in population genetics and community ecology. Stochastic fluctuations lead, inevitably, to the extinction of one of the species, but the relevant timescale depends on the underlying dynamics. The persistence time of the community has been calculated both for neutral models, where the only driving force of the system is drift (demographic stochasticity), and for models with strong selection. Following recent analyses that stress the importance of environmental stochasticity in empirical systems, we present here a general theory of the persistence time of a two-species community where drift, environmental variations and time independent selective advantage are all taken into account.