Data from: Species diversity rises exponentially with the number of available resources in a multi-trait competition model

Theoretical studies of ecosystem models have generally concluded that large numbers of species will not stably co-exist if the species are all competing for the same limited set of resources. Here we describe a simple multi-trait model of competition where the presence of $N$ resources will lead to the stable co-existence of up to $2^N$ species. Our model also predicts that the long-term dynamics of the population will lie on a neutral attractor hyperplane. When the population shifts within the hyperplane, its dynamics will behave neutrally, while shifts which occur perpendicular to the hyperplane will be subject to restoring forces. This provides a potential explanation of why complex ecosystems might exhibit both niche-like and neutral responses to perturbations. Like the neutral theory of biodiversity, our model generates good fits to species abundance distributions in several datasets but does so without needing to evoke inter-generational stochastic effects, continuous species creation or immigration dynamics. Additionally, our model is able to explain species abundance correlations between independent but similar ecosystems separated by more than 1400 km inside the Amazonian forests.生态系统模型的理论研究普遍认为，若所有物种均竞争同一有限集合的资源，则无法实现大量物种的稳定共存。本文描述了一个简单的竞争多性状模型，其中N种资源的存在可使得至多$2^N$个物种实现稳定共存。本模型同时预测，种群的长期动态将位于中性吸引子超平面（neutral attractor hyperplane）之上。当种群在超平面内部发生偏移时，其动态将呈现中性特征；而垂直于超平面的偏移则会受到恢复力的作用。这一发现为复杂生态系统为何同时表现出对扰动的类生态位与中性响应提供了潜在解释。与生物多样性中性理论（neutral theory of biodiversity）类似，本模型无需引入代际随机效应、持续物种生成或迁入动态，即可对多个数据集的物种多度分布（species abundance distributions）实现良好拟合。此外，本模型还能够解释亚马逊森林内部彼此相隔超过1400公里的独立但相似生态系统之间的物种多度相关性。