Figure 1

(A) Illustration of two species with different growth rates and sensitivities to the environmental fluctuations. The mean growth rates are indicated by horizontal lines and the variabilities by the length of the colored bars. (B) Typical trajectories for two species with the same growth rates but different sensitivities to the environment and , as defined in the text), shown in green and violet, respectively. In the upper two panels the time evolution of two separate non-competing populations is shown. Due to their equivalent average growth rate, both reach the same carrying capacity but fluctuations are substantially stronger for species 1. In the lower panel the evolution of both species in the same habitat is shown. Other parameters defined in the main text are the death rate and the carrying capacity K = 1000.