Self-organized biodiversity in biotic resource systems

Abstract

What determines biodiversity in nature is a prominent issue in ecology, especially in biotic resource systems that are typically devoid of cross-feeding. Here, we show that by incorporating pairwise encounters among consumer individuals within the same species, a multitude of consumer species can self-organize to coexist in a well-mixed system with one or a few biotic resource species. The coexistence modes can manifest as either stable steady states or self-organized oscillations. Importantly, all coexistence states are robust to stochasticity, whether employing the stochastic simulation algorithm or individual-based modeling. Our model quantitatively illustrates species distribution patterns across a wide range of ecological communities and can be broadly used to explain biodiversity in many biotic resource systems.