Understand
The assembly of ecological communities from a pool of species is central to ecology, but the effect of this process on properties of community interaction networks is still largely unknown.
- Here, we use a systematic analytical framework to describe how assembly from a species pool gives rise to community network properties that differ from those of the pool: Compared to the pool, the community shows a bias towards higher carrying capacities, weaker competitive interactions and stronger beneficial interactions.
- Moreover, even if interactions between all pool species are completely random, community networks are more structured, with correlations between interspecies interactions, and between interactions and carrying capacities.
- Nonetheless, we show that these properties are not sufficient to explain the coexistence of all community species, and that it is a simple relation between interactions and species abundances that is responsible for the diversity within a community.