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Stability and complexity in model ecosystems.

Robert M. May
- Vol. 6, pp 1-235
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The article was published on 1973-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 5524 citations till now.

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Biodiversity enhances ecosystem reliability

TL;DR: It is found that as the number of species per functional group increased, replicate communities were more consistent in biomass and density measures, suggesting that redundancy (in the sense of having multiple species perfunctional group) is a valuable commodity, and that the provision of adequate redundancy may be one reason for preserving biodiversity.
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Ecology of a Grazing Ecosystem: The Serengeti

TL;DR: Great species diversity was associated with greater biomass stability through the seasons, greater resistance to grazing by a single species of ungulate in both the wet and dry seasons, and greater resilience after grazing, and specific properties of trophic web members were identified that produced greater functional stability in more diverse communities.
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Food-web structure and network theory: The role of connectance and size.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that although some food webs have small-world and scale-free structure, most do not if they exceed a relatively low level of connectance, and a continuum of real-world networks including food webs whose ratios of observed to random clustering coefficients increase as a power–law function of network size over 7 orders of magnitude is identified.
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Coupling in predator-prey dynamics: Ratio-Dependence

TL;DR: It is suggested that the ratio-dependent form of the trophic function is a simple way of accounting for many types of heterogeneity that occur in large scale natural systems, while the prey- dependent form may be more appropriate for homogeneous systems like chemostats.
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Elton revisited: a review of evidence linking diversity and invasibility

TL;DR: It is found that much of the historical work that has contributed to the perception that diverse communities are less invasible, including Elton's observations and MacArthur's species-packing and diversity-stability models is based on controversial premises.