Category: Ecology

Summary: Finding how local recycling loops must be to rescue an unstable trophically coherent consumer-resource community.

Not only the amount of nutrient recycling matters in an ecosystem, but also where that recycling is routed. This experiment asks whether an already destabilized trophically coherent food-web Jacobian can be rescued only if recycling remains sufficiently local rather than smeared across the whole network.

The script fixes both stoichiometric mismatch and the overall recycling-buffer strength, then bisects a locality parameter that controls how tightly recycling stays near trophic neighborhoods. Stability is evaluated through the leading eigenvalue of the Jacobian, and iterative deepening extends the threshold search across larger communities.

The result helps separate two mechanisms that are often bundled together: total recycling strength and recycling architecture. It tests whether locality itself is a stabilizing ingredient in ecological feedback design.

Method: Dense non-symmetric Jacobian eigensolve with iterative deepening and bisection on recycling locality.

What is measured: Critical recycling-locality threshold, leading eigenvalue real part, midlayer localization score, fixed mismatch, fixed buffer strength, and bracket width.