Route to Chaos and Unified Dynamical Framework of Multi-Species Ecosystems

Abstract: We investigate species-rich mathematical models of ecosystems. Much of the existing literature focuses on the properties of equilibrium fixed points, in particular their stability and feasibility. Here we emphasize the emergence of limit cycles following Hopf bifurcations tuned by the variability of interspecies interaction. As the variability increases, and owing to the large dimensionality of the system, limit cycles typically acquire a growing spectrum of frequencies. This often leads to the appearance of strange attractors, with a chaotic dynamics of species abundances characterized by a positive Lyapunov exponent. We find that limit cycles and strange attractors preserve biodiversity as they maintain dynamical stability without species extinction. We give numerical evidences that this route to chaos dominates in ecosystems with strong enough interactions and where predator-prey behavior dominates over competition and mutualism. Based on arguments from random matrix theory, we further conjecture that this scenario is generic in ecosystems with large number of species, and identify the key parameters driving it. Overall, our work proposes a unifying framework, where a wide range of population dynamics emerge from a single model.