Coupled population models are used to study immune function, disease epidemics, plant-pollinator networks, food web dynamics, oceanic nutrient cycling and a host of other phenomena. The most widely used models assume the rate of contacts between interacting species is governed by the law of mass action or some variant of mass action. We developed a new interaction rate framework that captures key differences between purely physical interactions from which mass action was derived, and ecological interactions. Our framework incorporates the fact that many living things use sensory information to locate targets (e.g. hosts, prey, mates).
Results/Conclusions Our results reveal that many kinds of ecological interactions including consumer-resource interactions, mutualistic interactions, and interactions between disease vectors and hosts exhibit a property we call “information limitation.” This feature can profoundly affect both the predicted kinetics of ecological interactions and long-term dynamics of interacting populations. Counter intuitively, information limitation tends to stabilize antagonistic interactions, and destabilize mutualistic ones. This occurs because, as a species or type becomes rare, information about its whereabouts also becomes rare, weakening coupling with consumers and pathogens, but also with mutualists. We demonstrate how this can facilitate persistence of rare pathogens within a host’s body, alter the stability and maintenance of interactions between plants and their pollinators, and enhance the rates of marine productivity and carbon export.