Fig. 10

‘Bestiary’ of ecological attractors changing over evolutionary time. From an array of different random initial species densities (left-most column), the ecological states reached in the population dynamics changes over evolutionary time. a Initially, all initial conditions lead to the same ecological attractor (with all species at the same carrying capacity). b New attractor states begin to appear and become established. c In the long term, the two-attractor state is unstable and positive feedback causes one of the attractor states to ‘out-compete’ the other. d Eventually the one remaining attractor breaks down as only the strongest species (those that were high density in both patterns) take over [65]