Coevolution Maintains Diversity in the Stochastic ``Kill the Winner'' Model

Coevolution Maintains Diversity in the Stochastic “Kill the Winner” Model

Chi Xue and Nigel Goldenfeld

Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 268101 – Published 28 December 2017

Abstract

The “kill the winner” hypothesis is an attempt to address the problem of diversity in biology. It argues that host-specific predators control the population of each prey, preventing a winner from emerging and thus maintaining the coexistence of all species in the system. We develop a stochastic model for the kill the winner paradigm and show that the stable coexistence state of the deterministic kill the winner model is destroyed by demographic stochasticity, through a cascade of extinction events. We formulate an individual-level stochastic model in which predator-prey coevolution promotes the high diversity of the ecosystem by generating a persistent population flux of species.

Received 8 June 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.268101

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Marine ecology Organismal, population, evolutionary & ecological systems Population dynamics Stochastic processes

Markovian processes Stochastic analysis

Interdisciplinary PhysicsPhysics of Living SystemsStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Chi Xue and Nigel Goldenfeld^*

Department of Physics and Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Loomis Laboratory of Physics, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080, USA and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and Institute for Universal Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA