Robustness vs productivity during evolutionary community assembly: short-term synergies and long-term trade-offs

Abstract

AbstractThe realization that evolutionary feedbacks need to be considered to fully grasp ecological dynamics has sparked recent interest in the effect of evolution on community properties like coexistence and productivity. However, modern coexistence theory being limited to pairwise interactions, little is known about coevolution and diversification in rich communities. We leverage the recent multidimensional co-existence theory metrics, together with a structural community robustness metric, to study such properties in a general trait-based model of competition on a niche axis. We show that the effects of coevolution on coexistence are two-fold. In the short-term our results show synergies emerging between increasing productivity and reinforcing coexistence, while in the long-term, diversification and niche-packing destabilize communities, thus inducing a long-term trade-off between productivity and coexistence. In light of classical and recent work, our findings help advance understanding of evolutionary effects in high-dimensional systems. We illustrate how our theoretical predictions echo in observed empirical patterns. Finally, we discuss their implications and provide testable hypotheses.