Interplay between intraspecific suppression and environment in shaping biodiversity

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms that sustain high biodiversity remains a central challenge. MacArthur's classical consumer-resource model (MCRM) suggests that consumer diversity is limited by the number of available resources, yet empirical observations often exceed this bound. To address this, we extend the generalized consumer-resource model by incorporating intraspecific suppression and analyze its effects using the dynamical mean-field theory. Our results show that intraspecific suppression promotes biodiversity by preventing the emergence of dominant species and enabling more species to coexist, particularly in resource-rich environments. Furthermore, our results provide analytical bounds on relative diversity, demonstrating that the number of coexisting consumer species can exceed the number of resource kinds. This highlights the critical role of intraspecific suppression and environmental factors in promoting coexistence.