Ecological communities comprise diverse species and their interactions. Notably, ecological and evolutionary studies have revealed that reciprocal interactions such as predator-prey, competition, and mutualism, are key drivers of community dynamics. However, there is an argument that many species interactions are asymmetric, where one species unilaterally affects another species (amensalism or ...

Sanctioning or punishing is regarded as one of the most important dynamics in the evolution of cooperation. However, it has not been empirically examined yet whether or not such enforcement selection by sanctioning or punishing and classical theories like kin or reciprocity selection are separate mechanisms contributing to the evolution of cooperation. In addition, it remains largely unclear wh...

Data that can be described by a power function are ubiquitous in nature. Although there is consensus that such data frequently emerge generally from nonlinear complex systems, a variety of specific mechanisms may be responsible for creating the pattern in particular cases. Here, we report on the distribution of a scale insect (Coccus viridis) that is a common agricultural pest. Its distribution...

A key question of theoretical ecology is which properties of ecosystems favour their stability and help maintaining biodiversity. This question recently reconsidered mutualistic systems, generating intense controversy about the role of mutualistic interactions and their network architecture. Here we show analytically and verify with simulations that reducing the effective interspecific competit...

Can choice of mutualistic partners and the degree of their utilization determine (1) mutualistic partner coexistence, (2) relative abundance of mutualistic partners, and (3) environment-dependent changes in relative abundance? We investigate these questions in the context of the plant-mycorrhizal fungal mutualism by building a biological market model potentially applicable to other mutualisms a...

A major problem in evolutionary biology is explaining the success of mutualism. Solving this problem requires understanding the level of fidelity between interacting partners. Recent studies have proposed that fungus-growing ants and their fungal cultivars are the products of 'diffuse' coevolution, in which single ant and fungal species are not exclusive to one another. Here we show for ants an...

Standard game theory cannot describe microbial interactions mediated by diffusible molecules. Nevertheless, we show that one can still model microbial dynamics using game theory with parameters renormalized by diffusion. Contrary to expectations, greater sharing of metabolites reduces the strength of cooperation and leads to species extinction via a nonequilibrium phase transition. We report an...

The more that biologists study symbiotic microorganisms and their vast influence on animals, the more nature's networkism unfolds in a continuum at different biological scales. In this issue, Van Leuven et al. illuminate how a stable and longstanding animal-microbe mutualism increased its intergenomic network without gaining any new genomes.

The structure of mutualistic networks provides clues to processes shaping biodiversity [1-10]. Among them, interaction intimacy, the degree of biological association between partners, leads to differences in specialization patterns [4, 11] and might affect network organization [12]. Here, we investigated potential consequences of interaction intimacy for the structure and coevolution of mutuali...