The effects of diversity and diversity loss on the outcome of the introduction of a predator into a diverse native community.

<p>Initially, native species prevent the introduced predator from invading by reducing the predator to a low biomass. After species extinctions (shaded areas) or an increase in species-specific mortality m_F,I (arrow), at low diversity, the feedback mechanism fails and the introduced invades very suddenly. Low diversity communities have a lower initial biomass and the effect of diversity loss has a larger effect on the total biomass of less diverse systems – see supporting information S2. For clarity and ease of comparison between simulations, we here use a fixed rather than random interspecific competition coefficient (<i>α_i,j</i>) (p = 0.0015; e = 0.6; r = 1; g = 0.7; H = 20; m = 0.22; <i>α_i,j</i>₌0.3; K_{i =}50, m_F,i = [0,0.5], I = 5).