Direct and indirect effects: estimating the contributions along individual pathways during transient dynamics
- 1Florida State University
Abstract
All species in a community directly and indirectly affect each other, often through many causal pathways. The effects along each pathway can vary in magnitude as densities fluctuate during transient dynamics. Quantifying the changes in these pathway-specific effects is important for understanding the drivers of population-level dynamics. I present two computational methods that decomposes the total effect of one species on another into contributions along individual pathways during transient dynamics. These methods yield insight into which processes and species interactions are the primary drivers of transient population-level dynamics and how the effects of individual pathways scale with the number of intermediary species, time length, and interspecific interaction strength. I apply the method to two parameterized models, answering questions about the magnitudes of top-down effects in an intraguild predation system and the mechanisms driving disease reduction in a host-parasite system, and how the answers change through time.
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BibTeX
@misc{cortez2026direct,
title = {{Direct and indirect effects: estimating the contributions along individual pathways during transient dynamics}},
author = {M. Cortez},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.13.758872},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758872v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Direct and indirect effects: estimating the contributions along individual pathways during transient dynamics
AU - M. Cortez
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.13.758872
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758872v1
AB - All species in a community directly and indirectly affect each other, often through many causal pathways. The effects along each pathway can vary in magnitude as densities fluctuate during transient dynamics. Quantifying the changes in these pathway-specific effects is important for understanding the drivers of population-level dynamics. I present two computational methods that decomposes the total effect of one species on another into contributions along individual pathways during transient dynamics. These methods yield insight into which processes and species interactions are the primary drivers of transient population-level dynamics and how the effects of individual pathways scale with the number of intermediary species, time length, and interspecific interaction strength. I apply the method to two parameterized models, answering questions about the magnitudes of top-down effects in an intraguild predation system and the mechanisms driving disease reduction in a host-parasite system, and how the answers change through time.
ER -