Non-random interactions within and across guilds shape the potential to coexist in multi-trophic ecological communities

Abstract

Theory posits that the persistence of species in ecological communities is shaped by their interactions within and across trophic guilds. However, we lack empirical evaluations of how the structure, strength, and sign of biotic interactions drive the potential to coexist in diverse multi-trophic communities. Here we model community feasibility domains, a theoretically-informed measure of multi-species coexistence probability, from grassland communities comprising more than 45 species on average from three trophic guilds (plants, pollinators, and herbivores). Contrary to our hypothesis, increasing community complexity, measured either as the number of guilds or community richness, did not decrease community feasibility. Rather, we observed that high degrees of species self-regulation and niche partitioning allow maintaining larger levels of community feasibility and higher species persistence in more diverse communities. Our results show that biotic interactions within and across guilds are not random in nature and both structures significantly contribute to maintaining multi-trophic diversity.