I present a replication and, to some extent, a refutation of key results published by Zhong, Zhang, Li, Dai, & Yang in their 2022 paper "Species coexistence in spatial cyclic game of five species" (Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, 156: 111806), where ecosystem species coexistence was explored via simulation studies of the evolutionary spatial cyclic game (ESCG) Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock (RPSLS) with certain predator-prey relationships removed from the game's "interaction structure", i.e. with specific arcs ablated in the ESCG's dominance network, and with the ESCG run for 100,000 Monte Carlo Steps (MCS) to identify its asymptotic behaviors. I replicate the results presented by Zhong et al. for interaction structures with one, two, three, and four arcs ablated from the dominance network. I then empirically demonstrate that the dynamics of the RPSLS ESCG have sufficiently long time constants that the true asymptotic outcomes can often only be identified after running the ablated ESCG for 10,000,000MCS or longer, and that the true long-term outcomes can be markedly less diverse than those reported by Zhong et al. as asymptotic. Finally I demonstrate that, when run for sufficiently many MCS, the original unablated RPSLS system exhibits essentially the same asymptotic outcomes as the ablated RPSLS systems, and in this sense the only causal effect of the ablations is to alter the time required for the system to converge to the long-term asymptotic states that the unablated system eventually settles to anyhow.

翻译：本文对Zhong、Zhang、Li、Dai与Yang于2022年发表在《Chaos, Solitons and Fractals》（第156卷，111806页）的论文《五物种空间循环博弈中的物种共存》中的关键结果进行了复现，并在一定程度上提出了反驳。该原始研究通过模拟演化空间循环博弈（ESCG）的"石头-剪刀-布-蜥蜴-斯波克"（RPSLS）模型，在移除博弈"交互结构"中特定捕食关系（即在ESCG支配网络中消融特定弧）的条件下，运行100,000次蒙特卡洛步长（MCS）以探究生态系统物种共存的渐近行为。本研究完整复现了Zhong等人针对支配网络中消融一至四条弧的交互结构所报告的结果。随后通过实证分析表明：RPSLS ESCG的动态过程具有足够长的时间常数，其真实的渐近状态往往需要运行消融ESCG模型至10,000,000 MCS或更长时间才能显现；且真实的长期物种多样性可能显著低于Zhong等人所报告的"渐近"结果。最后论证了当运行足够多MCS时，原始未消融RPSLS系统展现的渐近状态与消融系统本质上相同。在此意义上，网络消融的唯一因果效应是改变系统收敛至长期渐近态所需的时间——而该渐近态正是未消融系统最终必然达到的状态。