Abstract
Understanding the mechanisms drivingdiversity in nature is an important and ongoingchallenge in our changing world. To efficiently protectecosystem diversity it is crucial to explain why andhow species coexist. Over the last decades modelsexplaining species coexistence have increased incomplexity but usually don’t incorporate a detailedspatial context. However, spatial structure has beenshown to affect species coexistence and habitatdeterioration is one of the biggest threats to biodiver-sity. We therefore explore a spatially explicit two-species model and assess the effects of habitatstructure on species coexistence using a wide diversityof fractal landscapes. Each species is specialized in aparticular habitat type. We find that landscape struc-ture has a major influence on the stability andconstitution of a two species system and may besufficient to explain the coexistence of two species.Well connected and highly structured habitat config-urations allow spatial segregation of both species andthis decreases local interspecific competition; in ourmodel this is the most important process stabilizingcoexistence.