Connecting higher-order interactions with ecological stability in experimental aquatic food webs.

ABSTRACT: Community ecology is built on theories that represent the strength of interactions between species as pairwise links. Higher-order interactions (HOIs) occur when a species changes the pairwise interaction between a focal pair. Recent theoretical work has highlighted the stabilizing role of HOIs for large, simulated communities, yet it remains unclear how important higher-order effects are in real communities. Here, we used experimental communities of aquatic protists to examine the relationship between HOIs and stability (as measured by the persistence of a species in a community). We cultured a focal pair of consumers in the presence of additional competitors and a predator and collected time series data of their abundances. We then fitted competition models with and without HOIs to measu

SUBMITTER: Shen C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10483096 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature