研究人员表明，如果生物量的增长呈亚线性幂律（指数小于1），表现出一种类似于个体发育模型的种群自我调节形式，那么这一难题就可以迎刃而解。研究表明，亚线性增长的种群之间的竞争性相互作用不会像逻辑增长那样导致排斥，反而会促进更高的多样性稳定性。
这个模型使理论与经典观测结果相一致，并预测了大规模的宏观生态模式。不过，它也做出了一个令人不安的预测：生物多样性的丧失可能会加速生态系统的不稳定。
据介绍，全球范围内物种多样性的丧失，使人们迫切需要了解多样化的生态系统如何保持稳定。早期的生态学思想和经典观察结果表明，稳定性会随着多样性的增加而增加，而生态学理论却做出了相反的预测，从而导致了长期存在的“多样性-稳定性之争”。
附：英文原文
Title: Diversity begets stability: Sublinear growth and competitive coexistence across ecosystems
Author: Ian A. Hatton, Onofrio Mazzarisi, Ada Altieri, Matteo Smerlak
Issue&Volume: 2024-03-15
Abstract: The worldwide loss of species diversity brings urgency to understanding how diverse ecosystems maintain stability. Whereas early ecological ideas and classic observations suggested that stability increases with diversity, ecological theory makes the opposite prediction, leading to the long-standing “diversity-stability debate.” Here, we show that this puzzle can be resolved if growth scales as a sublinear power law with biomass (exponent <1), exhibiting a form of population self-regulation analogous to models of individual ontogeny. We show that competitive interactions among populations with sublinear growth do not lead to exclusion, as occurs with logistic growth, but instead promote stability at higher diversity. Our model realigns theory with classic observations and predicts large-scale macroecological patterns. However, it makes an unsettling prediction: Biodiversity loss may accelerate the destabilization of ecosystems.
DOI: adg8488
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg8488