Code and simulated data from: Overexploitation can counteract top-down control and the paradox of enrichment in simple food chains

Because of its high abundance or its high feeding intensity, a consumer
can overexploit its resource by consuming it on a shorter timescale than
resource regeneration. While this short-term overexploitation is
widespread in nature, its general implications for biotic control patterns
and ecosystem stability are not clear. Here we use a
resource-plant-herbivore food chain model allowing for short-term
overexploitation (i.e., the plant can overexploit the resource and/or the
herbivore can overexploit the plant). We uncover the conditions under
which either type of overexploitation occurs and show that they
qualitatively change ecological patterns, mainly by suppressing top-down
control when interaction strength is high. When plant productivity
increases, top-down control patterns are suppressed above the level at
which plants start to overexploit resources. Similarly, when herbivory
intensity increases, top-down control patterns disappear when plants
become overexploited. Overexploitation also prevents enrichment-driven
destabilization by capping the energy fluxes in the ecosystem. These
findings connect top-down and bottom-up controls in a single framework,
and highlight the role overexploitation can play in structuring and
stabilizing food chains via the modulation of interaction strengths.