Figure Legend 1 The most basic Rock-Paper-Scissors Dynamic. (a) Modelled dynamics of a population of 900 “players” with perfectly intransitive competitive interactions. Players “tie” with themselves, winning and losing with equal probability. The model begins with Rock, Paper and Scissors players at 0.5, 0.33 and 0.17 proportional frequencies respectively and simulates their competitive interactions over 40,000 time steps (c and d) Figures adapted from Sinervo and Lively 1996. Similar RPS dynamics play out in a real population between three color morphs Yellow (Y), Blue (B,) and Orange (O) of U. stansburiana.
Figure Legend 2 Extending the logic of intransitive loops. (a) A classic RPS scenario, with three competing species each with an advantage over one other (b) Intransitivity can scale up to larger ecological communities. In this case seven species interact with every other species within the outermost loop, creating several inner (or nested) loops. (c) We suggest that these intransitive relationships happen simultaneously both intra and interspecifically to influence both ecological and evolutionary outcomes. Here three phenotypes of three species interact between and amongst themselves in overlapping intransitive loops.
Figure Legend 3 Intransitive or RPS loops can occur in a wide variety of scenarios, across unique temporal scales and across many taxa. The flexibility of these dynamics leads us to believe that they are widespread in nature and important stabilizing forces for both ecological and evolutionary outcomes. Some of these scenarios have been observed in nature and others represent systems where intransitivity may play an important role.
Figure Legend 4 The relative benefit of intraspecific intransitivity on interspecific intransitivity across a gradient of phenotypic similarity (𝜏) and phenotypic memory (p) values. Scenarios in which relative benefit is highest (high p and low 𝜏) are the same conditions that promote stability and robustness in the community. For model details see Maynard et al. (2019).