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Hatton IA, Mazzarisi O, Altieri A, Smerlak M. Diversity begets stability: Sublinear growth and competitive coexistence across ecosystems. Science 2024; 383:eadg8488. [PMID: 38484074 DOI: 10.1126/science.adg8488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2023] [Accepted: 02/07/2024] [Indexed: 03/19/2024]
Abstract
The worldwide loss of species diversity brings urgency to understanding how diverse ecosystems maintain stability. Whereas early ecological ideas and classic observations suggested that stability increases with diversity, ecological theory makes the opposite prediction, leading to the long-standing "diversity-stability debate." Here, we show that this puzzle can be resolved if growth scales as a sublinear power law with biomass (exponent <1), exhibiting a form of population self-regulation analogous to models of individual ontogeny. We show that competitive interactions among populations with sublinear growth do not lead to exclusion, as occurs with logistic growth, but instead promote stability at higher diversity. Our model realigns theory with classic observations and predicts large-scale macroecological patterns. However, it makes an unsettling prediction: Biodiversity loss may accelerate the destabilization of ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ian A Hatton
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0E8, Canada
| | - Onofrio Mazzarisi
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
- The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), 34014 Trieste, Italy
- National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS), 34014 Trieste, Italy
| | - Ada Altieri
- Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes (MSC), Université Paris Cité CNRS, 75013 Paris, France
| | - Matteo Smerlak
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Laboratoire de Biophysique et Evolution, UMR 8231 CBI, ESPCI Paris, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
- Capital Fund Management, 75007 Paris, France
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Smit N, Dezeure J, Sauvadet L, Huchard E, Charpentier MJ. Socially bonded females face more sexual coercion in a female-philopatric primate. iScience 2023; 26:107358. [PMID: 37766985 PMCID: PMC10520811 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107358] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2023] [Revised: 05/09/2023] [Accepted: 07/07/2023] [Indexed: 09/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Sexual coercion is a manifestation of sexual conflict increasing male mating success while inflicting costs to females. Although previous work has examined inter-individual variation in male sexually coercive tactics, little is known about female counter-strategies. We investigated whether social bonding mitigates the extent of sexual coercion faced by female mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), as a putative mechanism linking sociality to fitness. Surprisingly, females faced the most coercion from those males with whom they formed the strongest bonds, while the strength of a female-male bond was also positively correlated with coercion from all other males. Finally, greater social integration in the female network was positively correlated with coercion, through a direct 'public exposure' mechanism and not mediated by female reproductive success or retaliation potential. Altogether, this study shows that neither between- nor within-sex bonds are protective against sexual coercion and identifies, instead, a hidden cost of social bonding.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nikolaos Smit
- Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM), University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, EPHE, Montpellier, France
| | | | | | - Elise Huchard
- Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM), University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, EPHE, Montpellier, France
| | - Marie J.E. Charpentier
- Institute of Evolutionary Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM), University of Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, EPHE, Montpellier, France
- Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Bücklestrasse 5, 78467 Konstanz, Germany
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Roatti V, Cowlishaw G, Huchard E, Carter A. Social network inheritance and differentiation in wild baboons. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2023; 10:230219. [PMID: 37234491 PMCID: PMC10206475 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.230219] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2023] [Accepted: 04/26/2023] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
Immatures' social development may be fundamental to understand important biological processes, such as social information transmission through groups, that can vary with age and sex. Our aim was to determine how social networks change with age and differ between sexes in wild immature baboons, group-living primates that readily learn socially. Our results show that immature baboons inherited their mothers' networks and differentiated from them as they aged, increasing their association with partners of similar age and the same sex. Males were less bonded to their matriline and became more peripheral with age compared to females. Our results may pave the way to further studies testing a new hypothetical framework: in female-philopatric societies, social information transmission may be constrained at the matrilineal level by age- and sex-driven social clustering.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vittoria Roatti
- Anthropology Department, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
- Zoological Society of London, Institute of Zoology, London NW1 4RY, UK
| | - Guy Cowlishaw
- Zoological Society of London, Institute of Zoology, London NW1 4RY, UK
| | - Elise Huchard
- Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier, CNRS, University of Montpellier, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 5, France
| | - Alecia Carter
- Anthropology Department, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
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Danaher-Garcia N, Connor R, Fay G, Melillo-Sweeting K, Dudzinski KM. Using Social Network Analysis to Confirm the ‘Gambit of the Group’ Hypothesis for a Small Cetacean. Behav Processes 2022; 200:104694. [DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2022.104694] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2021] [Revised: 06/14/2022] [Accepted: 06/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/02/2022]
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Aubier TG, Kokko H. Volatile social environments can favour investments in quality over quantity of social relationships. Proc Biol Sci 2022; 289:20220281. [PMID: 35440207 PMCID: PMC9019516 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.0281] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Cooperation does not occur in a vacuum: interactions develop over time in social groups that undergo demographic changes. Intuition suggests that stable social environments favour developing few but strong reciprocal relationships (a ‘focused' strategy), while volatile social environments favour the opposite: more but weaker social relationships (a ‘diversifying' strategy). We model reciprocal investments under a quality–quantity trade-off for social relationships. We find that volatility, counterintuitively, can favour a focused strategy. This result becomes explicable through applying the theory of antagonistic pleiotropy, originally developed for senescence, to social life. Diversifying strategies show superior performance later in life, but with costs paid at young ages, while the social network is slowly being built. Under volatile environments, many individuals die before reaching sufficiently old ages to reap the benefits. Social strategies that do well early in life are then favoured: a focused strategy leads individuals to form their first few social bonds quickly and to make strong use of existing bonds. Our model highlights the importance of pleiotropy and population age structure for the evolution of cooperative strategies and other social traits, and shows that it is not sufficient to reflect on the fate of survivors only, when evaluating the benefits of social strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas G Aubier
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.,Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
| | - Hanna Kokko
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.,Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
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Croft DB, Witte I. The Perils of Being Populous: Control and Conservation of Abundant Kangaroo Species. Animals (Basel) 2021; 11:ani11061753. [PMID: 34208227 PMCID: PMC8230889 DOI: 10.3390/ani11061753] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2021] [Revised: 06/08/2021] [Accepted: 06/09/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Australia's first people managed landscapes for kangaroo species as important elements of their diet, accoutrements and ceremony. This developed and persisted for about 65,000 years. The second wave of colonists from the United Kingdom, Ireland and many subsequent countries introduced familiar domesticated livestock and they have imposed their agricultural practices on the same landscapes since 1788. This heralded an ongoing era of management of kangaroos that are perceived as competitors to livestock and unwanted consumers of crops. Even so, a kangaroo image remains the iconic identifier of Australia. Kangaroo management is shrouded in dogma and propaganda and creates a tension along a loose rural-city divide. This divide is further dissected by the promotion of the consumption of kangaroo products as an ecological good marred by valid concerns about hygiene and animal welfare. In the last decade, the fervour to suppress and micro-manage populations of some kangaroo species has mounted. This includes suppression within protected areas that have generally been considered as safe havens. This review explores these tensions between the conservation of iconic and yet abundant wildlife, and conflict with people and the various interfaces at which they meet kangaroos.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Benjamin Croft
- School of Biological Earth & Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
- Correspondence:
| | - Ingrid Witte
- Rooseach@Rootourism, Adelaide River, NT 0846, Australia;
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