title: Biodiversity in models of cyclic dominance is preserved by heterogeneity in site-specific invasion rates.
abstract: Global, population-wide oscillations in models of cyclic dominance may result in the collapse of biodiversity due to the accidental extinction of one species in the loop. Previous research has shown that such oscillations can emerge if the interaction network has small-world properties, and more generally, because of long-range interactions among individuals or because of mobility. But although these features are all common in nature, global oscillations are rarely observed in actual biological systems. This begets the question what is the missing ingredient that would prevent local oscillations to synchronize across the population to form global oscillations. Here we show that, although heterogeneous species-specific invasion rates fail to have a noticeable impact on species coexistence, randomness in site-specific invasion rates successfully hinders the emergence of global oscillations and thus preserves biodiversity. Our model takes into account that the environment is often not uniform but rather spatially heterogeneous, which may influence the success of microscopic dynamics locally. This prevents the synchronization of locally emerging oscillations, and ultimately results in a phenomenon where one type of randomness is used to mitigate the adverse effects of other types of randomness in the system.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science, Centre for Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Attila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Szolnoki
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, Koroška cesta 160, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia.|CAMTP - Center for Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Maribor, Krekova 2, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Matjaž
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Perc