nucleation

LIT-1230: The Minimum Environmental Perturbation Principle: A New Perspective on Niche Theory

1 min read

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StatusActive — read 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1352) in full, from arXiv 1901.09673v4; worth reading as the general form, for symmetric niche models, of the identity that uninvadable equilibria solve a constrained optimization, with the environment's perturbation from its supply point as the objective and species abundances as KKT multipliers, and MacArthur's principle as its dual. Read it knowing that symmetry is the hinge, that the asymmetric extension needs the answer to build its objective, and that the monotone-assembly result needs monostability.
Version2
Tagsecology, complex-systems
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1352 — Marsland, Cui and Mehta — The minimum environmental perturbation principle

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Marsland, R., Cui, W. & Mehta, P. (2020). The Minimum Environmental Perturbation Principle: A New Perspective on Niche Theory. The American Naturalist 196(3): 291–305. doi:10.1086/710093. Preprint: bioRxiv 10.1101/531640 (27 January 2019); arXiv:1901.09673.

Read in full on 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1352).

Why this is here

The synthesis the owner relayed on 2026-10-18, connecting the record’s distributed-agency line to statistical feature learning and ecological coexistence theory, recommended it for reading. It recasts community assembly as constrained optimization over environmental states, the bridge the synthesis drew between coexistence of differentiated species and optimization by many units under one rule. Bears on QUESTION-083. The synthesis’s subtitle for it was wrong; see the history note.

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