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Coexistence theory and the frequency-dependence of priority effects

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Abstract

Priority effects are commonly used to describe a broad suite of phenomena capturing the influence of species arrival order on the diversity, composition and function of ecological communities. Several studies have suggested reframing priority effects around the stabilizing and equalizing concepts of coexistence theory. We show that the only compatible priority effects are those characterized by positive frequency-dependence, irrespective of whether they emerge in equilibrium or non-equilibrium systems.

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Fig. 1: Effect of changing the consumption vector of species and the supply ratio of two resources in a consumer–resource model on the fitness ratio and stabilization potential (niche difference) of coexistence theory.
Fig. 2: PFD emerges from endogenously generated resource fluctuations.

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Data availability

All simulated data was generated by R language. All code used for this study is available at https://github.com/pojuke/CoexistPFD and upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Fukami, T. Grainger and D. Stouffer for helpful comments. P.-J.K. was supported by Stanford University and the Studying Abroad Scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. A.D.L. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics of Stanford University.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Po-Ju Ke, Andrew D. Letten.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Po-Ju Ke & Andrew D. Letten

  2. Centre for Integrative Ecology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Andrew D. Letten

  3. Institute of Integrative Biology, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Andrew D. Letten

Authors
  1. Po-Ju Ke
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  2. Andrew D. Letten
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P.-J.K. and A.D.L. conceived the study, performed the analysis and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Po-Ju Ke or Andrew D. Letten.

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Ke, PJ., Letten, A.D. Coexistence theory and the frequency-dependence of priority effects. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1691–1695 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0679-z

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