Figure 2. Multiple species can form stable communities given appropriate trade-off between growth rate and efficiency.

(A) Growth rates and efficiencies for 15 species coexisting at fixed, equal densities (n_k = 100/15 per patch; dispersal dilution α = 0.001). (B) Time-trace of the system in panel A started at the fixpoint, but subjected to a perturbation in α in cycle t = 1000 (spike in upper panel). The response of the 15 species is shown in the lower panel: the three representative species marked in color in panel A are shown with heavy lines, the remaining with thin grey lines. The perturbation drives the species abundances apart, but they relax back towards the steady state, indicating stable community coexistence (see also Methods).