Sonia Kéfi

A global comparison of structural properties across ecological network types: the role of connectance, degree distribution and sampling inconsistencies

This study compares structural properties of ecological networks globally, showing degree distribution explains network structure better than connectance, with environmental factors affecting food webs more than other interaction types.

Linking biotic interactions to species stability

The paper identifies a simple metric, self-regulation loss (SL), that predicts species stability in ecological communities despite their complexity.

Emergent coexistence and the limits of reductionism in ecological communities

The paper shows that emergent coexistence in ecological communities arises from dense networks of indirect effects in species-rich models with pairwise interactions, revealing a limit to reductionist explanations.

Nutrient heterogeneity emerges from dynamical abiotic-biotic feedback in a spatially explicit plant-herbivore occupancy model

This study shows that biotic-abiotic feedbacks can generate nutrient spatial heterogeneity in a plant-herbivore model through varying dispersal, foraging, and recycling behaviors.

Response diversity is a major driver of temporal stability in complex food webs

This study shows response diversity drives community stability in food webs, with food web structure playing a secondary role.

On the energetic boundaries of trophic systems

The paper develops a thermodynamic framework to determine the energetic boundaries of trophic systems and shows how these boundaries limit food-chain length.

Beyond biomass: how interactions shape species' role for ecosystem functioning

The paper introduces a dynamic contribution metric to assess species' functional roles in ecosystems, showing that rare species can be crucial due to biotic interactions.

EcologicalNetworksDynamics.jl: A Julia package to simulate the temporal dynamics of complex ecological networks

The paper introduces a Julia package for simulating temporal dynamics of ecological networks with diverse interaction types and environmental drivers.

Unpacking sublinear growth: diversity, stability and coexistence

The paper clarifies that the sublinear growth model does not resolve the species coexistence paradox because it relies on unrealistic assumptions about growth rates at low abundance.

Estimating distances to desertification points from dryland ecosystem images

The paper estimates the distance to degradation points in dryland ecosystems from images, validated on simulated landscapes and applied to a global dataset to identify fragile sites.