Fitness landscapes of biotic interactions shape the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of biodiversity

2025 · doi:10.32942/x2bq0z
preprint OA: closed
Full text JSON View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-03 · read from full text ⓘ

The paper studies how biotic interactions influence biodiversity dynamics and evolution by introducing a framework called “fitness landscapes of biotic interactions” (FLINTs), which link the fitness consequences of an interaction for a focal organism to traits of both the focal organism and its partner. It summarizes existing knowledge and argues that FLINTs can produce fitness-landscape topographies that differ substantially from simpler trait-matching landscapes often assumed in theory, using a plant–flower-visiting insect co-evolution diversification example to illustrate how FLINT shape can affect diversification. A stated limitation is that this work is a preprint that has not been peer reviewed, and it does not provide new measured real-world FLINT data within the paper. The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Biotic interactions promote, maintain or reduce diversity within and between species. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists have thus long studied links between biotic interactions and biodiversity dynamics. Yet theoretical and empirical research on these links are still separated by a substantial gap. This gap arises because empiricists rarely quantify the fitness consequences of interactions whereas theoreticians often describe these consequences in a simplistic manner. To bridge this gap, we introduce the concept of ‘fitness landscapes of biotic interactions’ (FLINTs). These landscapes relate the fitness consequence of an interaction for a focal organism to traits of both the focal organism and the interaction partner. FLINTs are an important extension of classical fitness landscape theory since they resolve how biotic environments alter fitness landscapes. We summarize current knowledge about FLINTs and show that their topography can strongly deviate from simplistic trait-matching landscapes implicitly assumed in many theoretical studies. We then illustrate how FLINT topography shapes biodiversity dynamics using an example of co-evolutionary diversification in plants and flower-visiting insects. This leads us to outline a research agenda that measures real-world FLINTs and analyses their consequences for biodiversity dynamics. In summary, FLINTs are a novel framework that fosters integration of theoretical and empirical research on how biotic interactions shape biodiversity dynamics.
Full text 2,296 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Biotic interactions promote, maintain or reduce diversity within and between species. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists have thus long studied links between biotic interactions and biodiversity dynamics. Yet theoretical and empirical research on these links are still separated by a substantial gap. This gap arises because empiricists rarely quantify the fitness consequences of interactions whereas theoreticians often describe these consequences in a simplistic manner. To bridge this gap, we introduce the concept of ‘fitness landscapes of biotic interactions’ (FLINTs). These landscapes relate the fitness consequence of an interaction for a focal organism to traits of both the focal organism and the interaction partner. FLINTs are an important extension of classical fitness landscape theory since they resolve how biotic environments alter fitness landscapes. We summarize current knowledge about FLINTs and show that their topography can strongly deviate from simplistic trait-matching landscapes implicitly assumed in many theoretical studies. We then illustrate how FLINT topography shapes biodiversity dynamics using an example of co-evolutionary diversification in plants and flower-visiting insects. This leads us to outline a research agenda that measures real-world FLINTs and analyses their consequences for biodiversity dynamics. In summary, FLINTs are a novel framework that fosters integration of theoretical and empirical research on how biotic interactions shape biodiversity dynamics. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2BQ0Z Life Sciences antagonism, Competition, eco-evolutionary model, mechanisms of biotic interactions, mutualism, natural selection Published: 2025-12-17 02:21 Last Updated: 2025-12-18 01:50 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: None Data and Code Availability Statement: Not applicable Language: English

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2025) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-20T01:45:00.602351+00:00