Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems I (joint session BP/DY)

BP 6.1: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2020, 15:00–15:15, SCH A251

Stability and diversity in random Lotka-Volterra systems with non-linear feedback — •Laura Sidhom and Tobias Galla — The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9Pl

Ecosystem stability is important for maintaining a healthy microbiome, so understanding the factors that contribute to stability is of great relevance. In this talk I will discuss an ecosystem of many interacting species, that evolve according to Lotka-Volterra dynamics, with interaction coefficients drawn from a random distribution. We investigate the effects of sigmoidal nonlinear feedback on the stability of the ecosystem, and on its diversity. We find that nonlinear feedback causes species growth to be bounded, increasing ecosystem stability. In the talk I will illustrate the model parameters, using examples of interactions found in nature. We also investigate how pairwise interactions, and the introduction of higher-order interactions affect ecosystem stability, and how this relates to ecosystems in nature. I will briefly discuss the generating-functional path integral approach and the linear stability analysis, and discuss these results in terms of the human microbiome and explain how attributes of the host can influence its stability.