Geometry of ecological coexistence and niche differentiation.

ABSTRACT

A fundamental problem in ecology is to understand how competition shapes biodiversity and species coexistence. Historically, one important approach for addressing this question has been to analyze Consumer Resource Models (CRMs) using geometric arguments. This has led to broadly applicable principles such as Tilman's R* and species coexistence cones. Here, we extend these arguments by constructing a novel geometric framework for understanding species coexistence based on convex polytopes in the space of consumer preferences. We show how the geometry of consumer preferences can be used to predict species coexistence and enumerate ecologically-stable steady states and transitions between them. Collectively, these results constitute a qualitatively new way of understanding the role of species traits in shaping ecosystems within niche theory.