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

Matan Danino, David A. Kessler, Nadav M. Shnerb

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)57-71
Number of pages15
JournalTheoretical Population Biology
Volume119
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
N.M.S. acknowledge the support of the Israel Science Foundation, grant no. 1427/15. D.A.K. acknowledge the support of BSF grant no. 2015619.

Funding Information:
N.M.S. acknowledge the support of the Israel Science Foundation , grant no. 1427/15 . D.A.K. acknowledge the support of BSF grant no. 2015619 . Appendix A

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

  • Community dynamics
  • Demographic stochasticity
  • Environmental stochasticity
  • Neutral theory
  • Selection
  • Storage effect

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Stability of two-species communities: Drift, environmental stochasticity, storage effect and selection'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this