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Code and simulated data from: Overexploitation can counteract top-down control and the paradox of enrichment in simple food chains

Guerber, Josquin1; Loeuille, Nicolas2; Gounand, Isabelle2

Published Dec 16, 2025 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ffbg79d4g

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Dec 16, 2025 version files 11.63 MB

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Abstract

Because of its high abundance or its high feeding intensity, a consumer can overexploit its resource by consuming it on a shorter timescale than resource regeneration. While this short-term overexploitation is widespread in nature, its general implications for biotic control patterns and ecosystem stability are not clear. Here we use a resource-plant-herbivore food chain model allowing for short-term overexploitation (i.e., the plant can overexploit the resource and/or the herbivore can overexploit the plant). We uncover the conditions under which either type of overexploitation occurs and show that they qualitatively change ecological patterns, mainly by suppressing top-down control when interaction strength is high. When plant productivity increases, top-down control patterns are suppressed above the level at which plants start to overexploit resources. Similarly, when herbivory intensity increases, top-down control patterns disappear when plants become overexploited. Overexploitation also prevents enrichment-driven destabilization by capping the energy fluxes in the ecosystem. These findings connect top-down and bottom-up controls in a single framework, and highlight the role overexploitation can play in structuring and stabilizing food chains via the modulation of interaction strengths.