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Fig. 3 | Biology Direct

Fig. 3

From: What can ecosystems learn? Expanding evolutionary ecology with learning theory

Fig. 3

Ecological dynamics before and after evolution in E 1. a-b Before evolution of interactions, when forcing is applied, some species densities increase, others decrease. a Four species responding differently to E 1 and E 2 (H=‘high’, L=‘low’). b Vectors of all species population densities are displayed in a pixel array as per Fig. 2. Under a given pattern of environmental forcing (top row), an initially random pattern of species densities (middle row), equilibrates at a pattern of species densities (after τ timesteps) (bottom row). Initial species densities do not alter the attractor attained (5 independent examples). c After evolution of interactions in E 1, equilibrium states are governed by that past pattern of environmental forcing and not by the current environment. This ecological memory is a stable attractor, reached from any initial pattern of species densities, regardless of the pattern of environmental forcing (some distortion is visible under E 2 forcing)

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