Consumer Resources (CRM) or Generalised Lotka Volterra (GLV) models are paradigmatic theoretical framework to describe species abundance dynamics in ecological communities. Most of the previous works considered fixed ecological networks, typically focusing their attention on quenched random disorder in the interaction strengths. The biodiversity of the ecological communities in these cases is limited by the competition exclusion principle (CEP), i.e. the number of coexisting species cannot be larger than the number of resources in the community. However several experimental evidences indicate that CEP in real ecological systems is typically violated. In this talk I will present the emergent biodiversity patterns in ecological dynamics with time dependent interactions and how how it promote biodiversity and species coexistence. Moreover, I will show how the implementation of time dependent interactions allows such models to describe ecological patterns found in empirical microbial communities

Prof. Samir Suweis is Associate Professor at the University of Padova, Physics and Astronomy Department. He co-lead the Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Physics (www.liphlab.com). His main research themes can be classified in three broad areas: 1) The formulation of simple principles to explain self-organization and emergent simplicity in nature; 2) Data analysis and complex network modeling and non-linear dynamics in socio-ecological systems; 3) Criticality and controllability in complex systems. In particular, his work focuses on the study of complex living systems under a theoretical framework provided by statistical mechanics. It addresses a wide range of related topics, including ecosystem organizations, ecological networks, stochastic modelling of ecosystems dynamics and sustainability and ecosystems services, brain networks and whole brain models.
Further info: https://suweis.github.io/