Multispecies coexistence emerges from pairwise exclusions in communities with competitive hierarchy

Abstract

Competitive coexistence is often understood as an additive process where coexisting species pairs, triplets, etc. combine to form larger communities. However, emergent coexistence - where multi-species persistence occurs without pairwise coexistence - can arise through mechanisms including intransitive loops, facilitation, or higher-order interactions. Emergent coexistence has functional consequences, for example constraining community assembly and reducing robustness to extinctions. Here, we demonstrate that emergent coexistence can arise without intransitivity in competitive communities with pairwise interactions. First, we develop a simple trade-off model where interactions are competitive, transitive, and pairwise, yet coexistence is emergent. Second, we show that coexistence is typically emergent in well-known hierarchical trade-off models. Third, we find that emergent coexistence frequently occurs without pronounced intransitivity in random model communities. Our results suggest that competitive coexistence may often be emergent, highlighting a need to better understand the mechanisms and prevalence of this phenomenon in order to reliably predict community assembly, robustness, and biodiversity maintenance.