A deep Generative Artificial Intelligence system to predict species coexistence patterns

Predicting coexistence patterns is a current challenge to understand diversity maintenance, especially in rich communities where these patterns' complexity is magnified through indirect interactions that prevent their approximation with classical experimental approaches. We explore cutting-edge...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Hirn, Johannes, García, José Enrique, Montesinos-Navarro, Alicia, Sánchez-Martín, Ricardo, Sanz, Verónica, Verdú, Miguel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/284176
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/284176
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Artificial intelligence
Direct interactions
Generative adversarial networks
Indirect interactions
Species coexistence
Variational AutoEncoders
Descripción
Sumario:Predicting coexistence patterns is a current challenge to understand diversity maintenance, especially in rich communities where these patterns' complexity is magnified through indirect interactions that prevent their approximation with classical experimental approaches. We explore cutting-edge Machine Learning techniques called Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to predict species coexistence patterns in vegetation patches, training generative adversarial networks (GAN) and variational AutoEncoders (VAE) that are then used to unravel some of the mechanisms behind community assemblage. The GAN accurately reproduces real patches' species composition and plant species' affinity to different soil types, and the VAE also reaches a high level of accuracy, above 99%. Using the artificially generated patches, we found that high-order interactions tend to suppress the positive effects of low-order interactions. Finally, by reconstructing successional trajectories, we could identify the pioneer species with larger potential to generate a high diversity of distinct patches in terms of species composition. Understanding the complexity of species coexistence patterns in diverse ecological communities requires new approaches beyond heuristic rules. Generative Artificial Intelligence can be a powerful tool to this end as it allows to overcome the inherent dimensionality of this challenge.