Diversity–Stability: May's Ecological Network Simulator

Ecology's central paradox, formalized by Robert May in 1972: does a more interconnected, more diverse community of species become more resilient, or less? This simulator builds a random web of S interacting species — each with its own self-regulating carrying capacity and a web of positive and negative links to the others — renders it as a live 3D network, and numerically integrates the linearized population dynamics frame by frame. Adjust species richness, connectance and interaction strength and watch the measured growth rate cross zero exactly where May's stability radius crosses the self-regulation strength, then perturb the populations to see the same network either settle back to equilibrium or spiral away from it.