Coexistence conditions and Competitive Exclusion in Adaptive Consumer-Resource Models

by Federico Loreto

Thursday 12 Nov 2026, 17:00 → 17:15 Europe/Rome

1/1-2 - Aula "C. Voci" (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio Marzolo)

The competitive exclusion principle states that, in an ecological setting, two species cannot coexist with constant populations by consuming a single resource and, as an extension, that the number of coexisting species is limited by the number of resources available. Using the consumer-resource model as a basis, the aim of our work is to explore the conditions for coexistence across variations of the model itself. Starting from a setting in which each species has an equal tradeoff between its total metabolic budget and its death rate, we gradually introduce differentiation in the tradeoff and the ability to mutate metabolic preferences in real time. Combining these features we obtain four different models, each with its own coexistence conditions and stationary solutions. The goal is to build a comprehensive knowledge of these models, while exploring the relationship between adaptability and pure metabolic efficiency.