title: The impact of initial evenness on biodiversity maintenance for a four-species in silico bacterial community.
abstract: Initial community evenness has been shown to be a key factor in preserving the functional stability of an ecosystem, but has not been accounted for in previous modelling studies. We formulate a model that allows the initial evenness of the community to be varied in order to investigate the consequent impact on system diversity. We consider a community of four interacting bacterial species, and present a stochastic, spatial individual-based model simulating the ecosystem dynamics. Interactions take place on a two-dimensional lattice. The model incorporates three processes: reproduction, competition and mobility. In addition to variable initial evenness, multiple competition schemes are implemented, modelling various possible communities, which results in diverse coexistence and extinction scenarios. Simulations show that long-term system behaviour is strongly dependent on initial evenness and competition structure. The system is generally unstable; higher initial evenness has a small stabilizing effect on ecosystem dynamics by extending the time until the first extinction.
authors.affiliation: KERMIT, Department of Mathematical Modelling, Statistics and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, Ghent B-9000, Belgium. Electronic address: Aisling.Daly@Ugent.be.
authors.forename: Aisling J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Daly
authors.affiliation: KERMIT, Department of Mathematical Modelling, Statistics and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, Ghent B-9000, Belgium. Electronic address: Jan.Baetens@UGent.be.
authors.forename: Jan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Baetens
authors.affiliation: KERMIT, Department of Mathematical Modelling, Statistics and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, Ghent B-9000, Belgium. Electronic address: Bernard.DeBaets@UGent.be.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: De Baets
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D011336:Probability; D013045:Species Specificity; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Cyclic competition; Evenness; Individual-based model; Rock-paper-scissors