Stabilizing interactions in assemblages with weak shared evolutionary history

Determine whether multispecies assemblages with weak shared evolutionary history, including invasive species or anthropogenically dispersed communities, generate stabilizing interspecific interactions that maintain coexistence.

Background

The study quantifies frequency-dependent selection across nine microbial communities in permanently ice-covered Antarctic lakes and finds pervasive negative frequency dependence, suggesting rare species advantage and selective mechanisms that maintain diversity. These communities are highly isolated with limited immigration, supporting long-term coevolutionary histories.

The authors caution that the observed stabilizing dynamics may be tied to coevolution and could change with warming and increased influx. They explicitly raise the question of whether similar stabilizing interactions arise in assemblages lacking strong shared evolutionary history, such as invasive or anthropogenically assembled communities, framing this as a key conservation concern.

References

Whether assemblages with weaker shared evolutionary history, such as invasive species or the products of anthropogenic dispersal, also create stabilizing interactions remains a key question for conservation.

— Rare species advantage in Antarctic Lakes  (2601.14213 - Reynebeau et al., 20 Jan 2026) in Final paragraph

We may not know the true nature of life before we detect other biospheres, and we may not detect other biospheres if we recoil, without careful justification, when the most promising places to close the question present themselves.

— The Epistemic Risk of the 31st Spore: If Planets Aren't Fine Tuned, We're Doing Life Detection Wrong  (2609.10604 - Smith et al., 8 Sep 2026) in Section “Our near-complete ignorance on the likelihood of abiogenesis” and Discussion

Whether analogous selection mechanisms emerge in more general competitive networks remains an open question deserving further investigation.

— Selection Rules for Species Coexistence in a Hierarchical May-Leonard Model  (2609.09027 - Samanta et al., 8 Sep 2026) in Section 4.1, subsection “Non-adjacent Coexistence States”