{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,21]],"date-time":"2026-03-21T21:19:45Z","timestamp":1774127985423,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":71,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,8]],"date-time":"2024-02-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1707350400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000057","name":"National Institute of General Medical Sciences","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["R35GM119461"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["R35GM119461"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000057","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.ploscompbiol.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS Comput Biol"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Ecosystems are commonly organized into trophic levels\u2014organisms that occupy the same level in a food chain (e.g., plants, herbivores, carnivores). A fundamental question in theoretical ecology is how the interplay between trophic structure, diversity, and competition shapes the properties of ecosystems. To address this problem, we analyze a generalized Consumer Resource Model with three trophic levels using the zero-temperature cavity method and numerical simulations. We derive the corresponding mean-field cavity equations and show that intra-trophic diversity gives rise to an effective \u201cemergent competition\u201d term between species within a trophic level due to feedbacks mediated by other trophic levels. This emergent competition gives rise to a crossover from a regime of top-down control (populations are limited by predators) to a regime of bottom-up control (populations are limited by primary producers) and is captured by a simple order parameter related to the ratio of surviving species in different trophic levels. We show that our theoretical results agree with empirical observations, suggesting that the theoretical approach outlined here can be used to understand complex ecosystems with multiple trophic levels.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1011675","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,8]],"date-time":"2024-02-08T18:51:21Z","timestamp":1707418281000},"page":"e1011675","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pcbi.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Emergent competition shapes top-down versus bottom-up control in multi-trophic ecosystems"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Zhijie","family":"Feng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Robert","family":"Marsland","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Jason W.","family":"Rocks","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1290-5897","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Pankaj","family":"Mehta","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"pcbi.1011675.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1086\/285546","article-title":"Cause-effect relationships in energy flow, trophic structure, and interspecific interactions","volume":"142","author":"NG Hairston","year":"1993","journal-title":"American Naturalist"},{"key":"pcbi.1011675.ref002","author":"S Pilosof","year":"2015","journal-title":"The Multilayer Nature of Ecological Networks"},{"key":"pcbi.1011675.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.2307\/1930126","article-title":"The Trophic-Dynamic Aspect of Ecology","volume":"23","author":"RL Lindeman","year":"1942","journal-title":"Ecology"},{"key":"pcbi.1011675.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Arditi R, Ginzburg L. 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