Mean growth rate when rare is not a reliable metric for persistence of species

Jayant Pande; Tak Fung; Ryan Chisholm; Nadav M. Shnerb

doi:10.1111/ele.13430

Mean growth rate when rare is not a reliable metric for persistence of species

Jayant Pande, Tak Fung, Ryan Chisholm, Nadav M. Shnerb

Department of Physics - at Bar-Ilan University

National University of Singapore

Research output: Contribution to journal › Letter › peer-review

37 Scopus citations

Abstract

The coexistence of many species within ecological communities poses a long-standing theoretical puzzle. Modern coexistence theory (MCT) and related techniques explore this phenomenon by examining the chance of a species population growing from rarity in the presence of all other species. The mean growth rate when rare, (Formula presented.), is used in MCT as a metric that measures persistence properties (like invasibility or time to extinction) of a population. Here we critique this reliance on (Formula presented.) and show that it fails to capture the effect of temporal random abundance variations on persistence properties. The problem becomes particularly severe when an increase in the amplitude of stochastic temporal environmental variations leads to an increase in (Formula presented.), since at the same time it enhances random abundance fluctuations and the two effects are inherently intertwined. In this case, the chance of invasion and the mean extinction time of a population may even go down as (Formula presented.) increases.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	274-282
Number of pages	9
Journal	Ecology Letters
Volume	23
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13430
State	Published - 1 Feb 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/CNRS

Funding

We thank Michael Kalyuzhny for many helpful discussions and for a critical reading of this manuscript. This research was supported by the ISF‐NRF Singapore joint research program (ISF grant number 2669/17, NRF grant number WBS R‐154‐000‐B09‐281). We thank Michael Kalyuzhny for many helpful discussions and for a critical reading of this manuscript. This research was supported by the ISF-NRF Singapore joint research program (ISF?grant number 2669/17, NRF grant number?WBS R-154-000-B09-281).

Funders	Funder number
ISF-NRF
ISF‐NRF Singapore joint research program
National Research Foundation	WBS R‐154‐000‐B09‐281
Israel Science Foundation	2669/17

Keywords

Coexistence
environmental stochasticity
invasibility
lottery model
mean growth rate
mean time to extinction
modern coexistence theory
persistence

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10.1111/ele.13430

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abstract = "The coexistence of many species within ecological communities poses a long-standing theoretical puzzle. Modern coexistence theory (MCT) and related techniques explore this phenomenon by examining the chance of a species population growing from rarity in the presence of all other species. The mean growth rate when rare, (Formula presented.), is used in MCT as a metric that measures persistence properties (like invasibility or time to extinction) of a population. Here we critique this reliance on (Formula presented.) and show that it fails to capture the effect of temporal random abundance variations on persistence properties. The problem becomes particularly severe when an increase in the amplitude of stochastic temporal environmental variations leads to an increase in (Formula presented.), since at the same time it enhances random abundance fluctuations and the two effects are inherently intertwined. In this case, the chance of invasion and the mean extinction time of a population may even go down as (Formula presented.) increases.",

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Mean growth rate when rare is not a reliable metric for persistence of species

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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