Egbert H. van Nes, Diego G. F. Pujoni, Sudarshan A. Shetty, Gerben Straatsma, Willem M. de Vos, Marten Scheffer

PNAS 121 (2) e2221791120

Data from the human microbiome as well as communities of flies, rodents, fish, trees, plankton, and fungi suggest that consistently a tiny fraction of the species accounts for most of the biomass. We suggest that this may be due to an overlooked phenomenon that we call “stickiness” of rarity. This can arise in groups of species that are equivalent in resource use but differ in their response to stochastic stressors such as weather extremes and disease outbreaks. Stickiness is not absolute though. In our simulations, as well as natural time series from microbial communities, rare species occasionally replace dominant ones that collapse, supporting the insurance theory of biodiversity. Rare species may play an important role as backups stabilizing ecosystem functioning.

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