A biodiversity theory incorporating intra- and inter specific effects

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26840143
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Ecology/Environment
• Research Institution: The Graduate University for Advanced Studies
• Principal Investigator: Ohtsuki Hisashi 総合研究大学院大学, 先導科学研究科, 講師 (50517802)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 生物多様性 / 理論モデル / 共生 / 被食捕食 / 競争 / 中立モデル

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Biodiversity is an important issue in ecology, and the mechanism of its maintenance needs to be clarified. A previous "neutral model" of biodiversity paid particular attention to the balance between immigration and local extinction to explain the diversity, while the role of intra specific effects have been underrepresented. I have developed a new theoretical model that incorporates those effects as the third factor to reveal their role in the maintenance of biodiversity. I have found that mutualism and competition produce a few dominant species and many rare ones, and that prey-predator relations produce many intermediate ones. I also found that the deviation from neutrality is detected effectively by the species-frequency-weighted measures of biodiversity, not by the bare total number of species.

Free Research Field

数理生物学