Figure 2

Biodiversity as a function of the mutualism and intra-guild competition parameters. We show the results obtained by numerically simulating the dynamical population model where the network’s structure corresponds to two real mutualistic systems. The levels of biodiversity are shown as a function of the intensities of mutualism and competition (the maxima being \(N=719\) for M-PL-044 and \(N=266\) for M-PL-048). The color scale represents biodiversity, given by the number, \(N\), of species present in the steady state. Left panels a and c show the results obtained when the system evolves according to a dynamics that corresponds to the simplified model given by eq. 2. Right panels b and d show the results obtained for the model corresponding to eq. 1. We show results for two different real networks: M-PL-044³⁷ in top panels a and b; and M-PL-048³⁹ in bottom panels c and d. The characteristics of these networks as well as more results for other networks are presented in the Supplementary Information (Tables S1, S2 and Figs S1 to S3). These results correspond to the following parameter values: intra-specific competition terms \({\beta }_{i}^{P}={\beta }_{k}^{A}=5.0\), growing terms \({\alpha }_{i}^{P}\in \mathrm{(0.9,}\,\mathrm{1.1)}\), \({\alpha }_{k}^{A}\in \mathrm{(0.9,}\,\mathrm{1.1)}\) and Holling terms \({h}^{P}={h}^{A}=0.1\).