The diversity of life and its organization in networks of interacting species has been a long-standing theoretical puzzle for ecologists. Ever since May's provocative paper challenging whether 'large complex systems [are] stable' various hypotheses have been proposed to explain when stability should be the rule, not the exception. Spatial dynamics may be stabilizing and thus explain high community diversity, yet existing theory on spatial stabilization is limited, preventing comparisons of the role of dispersal relative to species interactions. Here we incorporate dispersal of organisms and material into stability-complexity theory. We find that stability criteria from classic theory are relaxed in direct proportion to the number of ecologically distinct patches in the meta-ecosystem. Further, we find the stabilizing effect of dispersal is maximal at intermediate intensity. Our results highlight how biodiversity can be vulnerable to factors, such as landscape fragmentation and habitat loss, that isolate local communities.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 9. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 December 2020.
All research outputs
#4,664,572
of 27,877,734 outputs
Outputs from Nature Communications
#40,894
of 67,353 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#63,148
of 320,654 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature Communications
#511
of 858 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,877,734 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 83rd percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 67,353 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 52.8. This one is in the 39th percentile – i.e., 39% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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