Universal Avalanche Fluctuations in Ecological communities under Resource Frustration*

Avalanche critical fluctuations are an important dynamic feature of many systems including earthquakes and magnet polarization. They are caused by sudden release of potential built up by frustration in energy dissipation. Here, we introduce the concept of resource frustration in ecological systems to describe transient buildup of resources within a community which are then dissipated via avalanche-like events of individual species growth. We developed a general model to predict the conditions under which this type of fluctuations emerge in ecological systems and identified scaling laws and critical exponents of these avalanche events. We also demonstrated that these scaling laws are universal across multiple model microbial communities, (e.g., siderophore dependence and auxotrophic mutualism) using consumer-resource models. Our results reveal a novel class of transient phenomena in ecology and provide mechanisms by which stochastic fluctuations in individual components amplify and propagate throughout the ecological system.