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Fundamental Unpredictability In	 Multispecies Competition, The American
Naturalist
 









Abstract: One of the central goals of ecology is to
predict the distribution and abundance of organisms. Here, we show
that, in ecosystems of high biodiversity, the outcome of
multispecies competition can be fundamentally unpredictable. We
consider a competition model widely applied in phytoplankton
ecology and plant ecology in which multiple species compete for
three resources. We show that this competition model may have
several alternative outcomes, that the dynamics leading to these
alternative outcomes may exhibit transient chaos, and that the
basins of attraction of these alternative outcomes may have an
intermingled fractal geometry. As a consequence of this fractal
geometry, it is impossible to predict the winners of multispecies
competition in advance.


  
Fundamental
	Unpredictability In Multispecies
	Competition, Jef
  Huisman, Franz J. Weissing, The American Naturalist,
  Vol. 157, No. 5, May 2001, contributed by
	Jef
  Huisman

  
  
 
 
  
 
 

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