Self-organized vegetation patterns promote persistence of plant–pollinator mutualisms under environmental stress
- 1Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS), Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Görlitz, Germany
- 2Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, João Pessoa, State of Paraíba, Brazil
- 3ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research & Instituto de Física Teórica, Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Abstract
Mutualisms are key for structuring ecological communities, but they are sensitive to environmental change and fluctuations in population size. Consequently, how mutualisms achieve stability remains an open question in ecological theory. Motivated by previous results in competitive and predator–prey interactions, and by empirical evidence that plant aggregation simultaneously enhances pollinator visitation and intensifies intraspecific competition, we hypothesize that self-organized pattern formation can act as a key stabilizing mechanism of mutualistic interactions. We test this hypothesis using a two-species reaction–diffusion model of a plant–pollinator system that incorporates non-local plant competition and local mutualistic interactions. We first perform a linear stability analysis to determine the conditions under which non-local competition can trigger vegetation pattern formation. We then compute the bifurcation diagrams for both spatial and homogeneous solutions and find that pattern formation enables coexistence at mutualistic strengths below the threshold required in well-mixed populations. This stability gain increases as environmental conditions worsen, because local maxima in vegetation density create the conditions for community persistence despite globally harsh conditions. Moreover, in the strong mutualism limit, the spatial system exhibits multistability between patterned and homogeneous solutions, creating alternative stable configurations that can buffer against fluctuations in population abundance. Spatial self-organization thus stabilizes mutualistic communities through spatial patterns, potentially driving plant-pollinator persistence in stressed environments, including arid ecosystems. Author summary: Mutualistic interactions, such as those between plants and pollinators, are essential for maintaining biodiversity. However, how these interactions remain stable under changing environmental conditions and species abundances is still unclear. Recent empirical work suggests that plant aggregation can have opposing effects on mutualistic stability because vegetation patches attract higher pollinator densities but also intensify intraspecific competition. Yet, a theoretical framework to formalize these effects is still lacking. We introduce a simple spatial model of a plant–pollinator system to investigate how species distributions affect coexistence, and show that plant aggregation has opposing community-level effects: it reduces population sizes but lowers the mutualism threshold for stable coexistence and generates multiple alternative stable states, potentially enhancing resilience to external perturbations. Spatial self-organization therefore provides a local stabilizing mechanism for mutualistic communities that could be particularly relevant in stressed environments.
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BibTeX
@article{bongestab2026selforganized,
title = {{Self-organized vegetation patterns promote persistence of plant–pollinator mutualisms under environmental stress}},
author = {Matheus Bongestab and David Pinto-Ramos and Ricardo Martinez-Garcia},
journal = {PLOS Ecosystems},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pesy.0000021},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pesy.0000021},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Self-organized vegetation patterns promote persistence of plant–pollinator mutualisms under environmental stress
AU - Matheus Bongestab
AU - David Pinto-Ramos
AU - Ricardo Martinez-Garcia
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/08
JO - PLOS Ecosystems
DO - 10.1371/journal.pesy.0000021
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pesy.0000021
AB - Mutualisms are key for structuring ecological communities, but they are sensitive to environmental change and fluctuations in population size. Consequently, how mutualisms achieve stability remains an open question in ecological theory. Motivated by previous results in competitive and predator–prey interactions, and by empirical evidence that plant aggregation simultaneously enhances pollinator visitation and intensifies intraspecific competition, we hypothesize that self-organized pattern formation can act as a key stabilizing mechanism of mutualistic interactions. We test this hypothesis using a two-species reaction–diffusion model of a plant–pollinator system that incorporates non-local plant competition and local mutualistic interactions. We first perform a linear stability analysis to determine the conditions under which non-local competition can trigger vegetation pattern formation. We then compute the bifurcation diagrams for both spatial and homogeneous solutions and find that pattern formation enables coexistence at mutualistic strengths below the threshold required in well-mixed populations. This stability gain increases as environmental conditions worsen, because local maxima in vegetation density create the conditions for community persistence despite globally harsh conditions. Moreover, in the strong mutualism limit, the spatial system exhibits multistability between patterned and homogeneous solutions, creating alternative stable configurations that can buffer against fluctuations in population abundance. Spatial self-organization thus stabilizes mutualistic communities through spatial patterns, potentially driving plant-pollinator persistence in stressed environments, including arid ecosystems. Author summary: Mutualistic interactions, such as those between plants and pollinators, are essential for maintaining biodiversity. However, how these interactions remain stable under changing environmental conditions and species abundances is still unclear. Recent empirical work suggests that plant aggregation can have opposing effects on mutualistic stability because vegetation patches attract higher pollinator densities but also intensify intraspecific competition. Yet, a theoretical framework to formalize these effects is still lacking. We introduce a simple spatial model of a plant–pollinator system to investigate how species distributions affect coexistence, and show that plant aggregation has opposing community-level effects: it reduces population sizes but lowers the mutualism threshold for stable coexistence and generates multiple alternative stable states, potentially enhancing resilience to external perturbations. Spatial self-organization therefore provides a local stabilizing mechanism for mutualistic communities that could be particularly relevant in stressed environments.
SN - 3070-8141
ER -