A Chip-Firing Game for Biocrust Reverse Succession ...

• Main Author: Janapaty, Shloka V.
• Format: Report
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2023
• Subjects: Populations and Evolution q-bio.PE; FOS Biological sciences; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2305.05193; https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.05193

Experimental work suggests that biological soil crusts, dominant primary producers in drylands and tundra, are particularly vulnerable to disturbances that cause reverse ecological succession. To model successional transitions in biocrust communities, we propose a resource-firing game that captures succession dynamics without specifying detailed function forms. The model is evaluated in idealized terrestrial ecosystems, where disturbances are modeled as a reduction in available resources that triggers inter-species competition. The resource-firing game is executed on a finite graph with nodes representing species in the community and a sink node that becomes active when every species is depleted of resources. First, we discuss the theoretical basis of the resource-firing game, evaluate it in the light of existing literature, and consider the characteristics of a biocrust community that has evolved to equilibrium. We then examine the dependence of resource-firing and game stability on species richness, ... : 11 pages, 6 figures; arguments revised, citations added ...