2025/01/15 by Marc Duran-Sala, Duran-Sala, Marc, Sandro Meloni +3 · 1 voice
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.09172
openalex publication_date 2025/01/15 · openalex created_date 2025/01/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Ecological models traditionally explain stability and coexistence through pairwise interactions among species. However, interactions can also involve groups of three or more species, higher-order interactions, which recent theory suggests can stabilize communities. Yet, the conditions under which higher-order interactions are sufficient to stabilize coexistence in communities where pairwise and higher-order interactions occur simultaneously remain unknown. This work addresses this gap by analyzing a model of competitive communities that incorporates a proportion of pairwise and higher-order interactions. Using empirical data, numerical simulations, and analytical methods, we show that higher-order interactions alone cannot guarantee coexistence. We find that, while a small fraction of higher-order interactions can stabilize dynamics in communities of identical species, this effect weakens under more realistic conditions, such as variability in birth and mortality rates or explicit interaction structures. Our results challenge the prevailing view of higher-order interactions as a universal stabilizing mechanism, providing quantitative evidence of the joint importance of both pairwise and higher-order interactions, together with network structure and species parameters, for understanding ecological stability.