Coevolution Maintains Diversity in the Stochastic "Kill the Winner" Model
Abstract
The "kill the winner" hypothesis is an attempt to address the problem of diversity in biology. It argues that host-specific predators control the population of each prey, preventing a winner from emerging and thus maintaining the coexistence of all species in the system. We develop a stochastic model for the kill the winner paradigm and show that the stable coexistence state of the deterministic kill the winner model is destroyed by demographic stochasticity, through a cascade of extinction events. We formulate an individual-level stochastic model in which predator-prey coevolution promotes the high diversity of the ecosystem by generating a persistent population flux of species.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.268101
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1706.02666
- Bibcode:
- 2017PhRvL.119z8101X
- Keywords:
-
- Physics - Biological Physics;
- Physics - Physics and Society;
- Quantitative Biology - Populations and Evolution
- E-Print:
- Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 268101 (2017)