Predicting the outcome of interactions between species is central to our current understanding of diversity maintenance. However, we have limited information about the robustness of many model-based predictions of species coexistence. This limitation is partly because several sources of uncertainty are often ignored when making predictions. Here, we introduce a framework to simultaneously explore how different mathematical models, different environmental contexts, and parameter uncertainty impact the probability of predicting species coexistence. Using a set of pairwise competition experiments on annual plants, we provide direct evidence that subtle differences between models lead to contrasting predictions of both coexistence and competitive exclusion. We also show that the effects of environmental context dependency and parameter uncertainty on predictions of species coexistence are not independent of the model used to describe population dynamics. Our work suggests that predictions of species coexistence and extrapolations thereof may be particularly vulnerable to these underappreciated founts of uncertainty.

中文翻译：

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环境背景、参数敏感性和结构敏感性影响一年生植物共存的预测

预测物种之间相互作用的结果是我们目前对多样性维护的理解的核心。然而，关于许多基于模型的物种共存预测的稳健性，我们的信息有限。这种限制的部分原因是在进行预测时经常忽略几个不确定性来源。在这里，我们引入一个框架来同时探索不同的数学模型、不同的环境背景和参数不确定性如何影响预测物种共存的概率。通过对一年生植物进行一组成对竞争实验，我们提供了直接证据，表明模型之间的细微差异导致了共存和竞争排斥的对比预测。我们还表明，环境背景依赖性和参数不确定性对物种共存预测的影响并不独立于用于描述种群动态的模型。我们的工作表明，对物种共存的预测及其推断可能特别容易受到这些未被充分认识的不确定性的影响。