Ecosystems and their embedded ecological communities are almost always by definition collections of oscillating populations. This is apparent given the qualitative reality that oscillations emerge from consumer-resource interactions, which are the elementary building blocks for ecological communities. It is also likely always the case that oscillatory consumer-resource pairs will be connected to one another via trophic cross-feeding with shared resources or via competitive interactions among resources. Thus, one approach to understanding the dynamics of communities conceptualizes them as collections of oscillators coupled in various arrangements. Here we look to the pioneering work of Kuramoto on coupled oscillators and ask to what extent can his insights and approaches be translated to ecological systems. We explore the four ecologically significant coupling arrangements of the simple case of three oscillator systems with both the Kuramoto model and with the classical Lotka-Volterra equations. Our results show that the six-dimensional Lotka-Volterra systems behave strikingly similarly to that of the corresponding Kuramoto systems across all coupling combinations. This qualitative similarity in the results between these two approaches suggests that a vast literature on coupled oscillators may be relevant in furthering our understanding of ecosystem and community organization.

根据定义，生态系统及其内在的生态群落几乎总是振荡人口的集合。考虑到定性的现实，即消费者与资源的相互作用会产生振荡，这是生态社区的基本组成部分，因此这是显而易见的。通常，振荡的消费者-资源对将通过营养共享的营养交叉馈送或资源之间的竞争性相互作用而相互连接。因此，一种理解社区动态的方法将它们概念化为以各种布置耦合的振荡器的集合。在这里，我们着眼于仓本在耦合振荡器上的开拓性工作，并询问他的见解和方法在多大程度上可以转化为生态系统。我们用仓本模型和经典Lotka-Volterra方程探索了三个振荡器系统的简单情况的四个具有生态学意义的耦合排列。我们的结果表明，在所有耦合组合中，六维Lotka-Volterra系统的行为与相应的Kuramoto系统的行为惊人地相似。这两种方法的结果在质量上的相似性表明，有关耦合振荡器的大量文献可能与增进我们对生态系统和社区组织的理解有关。我们的结果表明，在所有耦合组合中，六维Lotka-Volterra系统的行为与相应的Kuramoto系统的行为惊人地相似。这两种方法的结果在质量上的相似性表明，有关耦合振荡器的大量文献可能与增进我们对生态系统和社区组织的理解有关。我们的结果表明，在所有耦合组合中，六维Lotka-Volterra系统的行为与相应的Kuramoto系统的行为惊人地相似。这两种方法的结果在质量上的相似性表明，有关耦合振荡器的大量文献可能与增进我们对生态系统和社区组织的理解有关。