Reordered hierarchical complexity in ecosystems with delayed interactions.

ABSTRACT: It was once believed that large ecosystems with random interactions are unstable, limiting their complexity. Thus, large community size or numerous interactions are rare in nature. Later, a strict hierarchical complexity was revealed: competitive and mutualistic communities have the least complexity, followed by random ones, and then predator-prey communities. Recently, a hierarchy of recovery times for ecosystems with identical complexity was found, influenced by discrete time delays. A key question is whether this hierarchical complexity holds under noninstantaneous interactions. We surprisingly show that it does not. Specifically, the complexity of predator-prey communities is significantly affected by time delays, reordering the hierarchy at a critical threshold. These changes exhibit

SUBMITTER: Qin BW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12280872 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature