Evolution to alternative levels of stable diversity leaves areas of niche space unexplored
Fig 4
Invasion fitness landscapes for alternative metastable states.
Alternative metastable states resulting from simulations with different levels of initial population diversity. Each panel represents an alternative level of metastable diversity for a single set of parameters and only differ based on the randomly generated initial communities. Points represent surviving species at the end of each simulation. Arrows are proportional to the square root of the selection gradient for each species. The surface shows the invasion fitness (per capita growth rate of a rare mutant) with positive invasion fitness displayed in orange and negative in blue. The maximum invasion fitness for each panel is displayed in the top right corner of the panel. All axes are displayed from -2 to 2. Simulations in the left two columns use the quartic carrying capacity and those in the right three columns use the radially symmetric carrying capacity. All other parameters can be found in Table A in S1 Parameters. Additional versions of these figures with the initial population also display in addition to the final configuration are linked to in S1 Text.