Habitat loss alters effects of intransitive higher-order competition on biodiversity: a new metapopulation framework.

ABSTRACT: Recent studies have suggested that intransitive competition, as opposed to hierarchical competition, allows more species to coexist. Furthermore, it is recognized that the prevalent paradigm, which assumes that species interactions are exclusively pairwise, may be insufficient. More importantly, whether and how habitat loss, a key driver of biodiversity loss, can alter these complex competition structures (and therefore species coexistence) remain unclear. We thus present a new, simple yet comprehensive metapopulation framework that can account for any competition pattern and more complex higher-order interactions (HOIs) among species. We find that competitive intransitivity increases community diversity and that HOIs generally enhance this effect. Essentially, intransitivity promotes spec

SUBMITTER: Li Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7739928 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature