Metabolic Trade-Offs Promote Diversity in a Model Ecosystem. Author Anna Posfai, Thibaud Taillefumier, Ned Wingreen Publication Year 2017 Type Journal Article Abstract In nature, a large number of species can coexist on a small number of shared resources; however, resource-competition models predict that the number of species in steady coexistence cannot exceed the number of resources. Motivated by recent studies of phytoplankton, we introduce trade-offs into a resource-competition model and find that an unlimited number of species can coexist. Our model spontaneously reproduces several notable features of natural ecosystems, including keystone species and population dynamics and abundances characteristic of neutral theory, despite an underlying non-neutral competition for resources. Keywords Models, Biological, Ecosystem, Population Dynamics, Biodiversity, Phytoplankton Journal Phys Rev Lett Volume 118 Issue 2 Pages 028103 Date Published 2017 Jan 13 ISSN Number 1079-7114 DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.028103 Alternate Journal Phys Rev Lett PMCID PMC5743855 PMID 28128613 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML