Moving forward in circles: challenges and opportunities in modelling population cycles

Population cycling is a widespread phenomenon, observed across a multitude of taxa in both laboratory and natural conditions. Historically, the theory associated with population cycles was tightly linked to pairwise consumer–resource interactions and studied via deterministic models, but current empirical and theoretical research reveals a much richer basis for ecological cycles. Stochasticity and seasonality can modulate or create cyclic behaviour in non-intuitive ways, the high-dimensionality in ecological systems can profoundly influence cycling, and so can demographic structure and eco-evolutionary dynamics. An inclusive theory for population cycles, ranging from ecosystem-level to demographic modelling, grounded in observational or experimental data, is therefore necessary to better understand observed cyclical patterns. In turn, by gaining better insight into the drivers of population cycles, we can begin to understand the causes of cycle gain and loss, how biodiversity interacts with population cycling, and how to effectively manage wildly fluctuating populations, all of which are growing domains of ecological research

Evolution of predator dispersal in relation to spatio-temporal prey dynamics : how not to get stuck in the wrong place!

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Robust permanence for interacting structured populations

The dynamics of interacting structured populations can be modeled by $\frac{dx_i}{dt}= A_i (x)x_i$ where $x_i\in \R^{n_i}$, $x=(x_1,\dots,x_k)$, and $A_i(x)$ are matrices with non-negative off-diagonal entries. These models are permanent if there exists a positive global attractor and are robustly permanent if they remain permanent following perturbations of $A_i(x)$. Necessary and sufficient conditions for robust permanence are derived using dominant Lyapunov exponents $\lambda_i(\mu)$ of the $A_i(x)$ with respect to invariant measures $\mu$. The necessary condition requires $\max_i \lambda_i(\mu)>0$ for all ergodic measures with support in the boundary of the non-negative cone. The sufficient condition requires that the boundary admits a Morse decomposition such that $\max_i \lambda_i(\mu)>0$ for all invariant measures $\mu$ supported by a component of the Morse decomposition. When the Morse components are Axiom A, uniquely ergodic, or support all but one population, the necessary and sufficient conditions are equivalent. Applications to spatial ecology, epidemiology, and gene networks are given

Theoretical Study of Pest Control Using Stage Structured Natural Enemies with Maturation Delay: A Crop-Pest-Natural Enemy Model

In the natural world, there are many insect species whose individual members have a life history that takes them through two stages, immature and mature. Moreover, the rates of survival, development, and reproduction almost always depend on age, size, or development stage. Keeping this in mind, in this paper, a three species crop-pest-natural enemy food chain model with two stages for natural enemies is investigated. Using characteristic equations, a set of sufficient conditions for local asymptotic stability of all the feasible equilibria is obtained. Moreover, using approach as in (Beretta and Kuang, 2002), the possibility of the existence of a Hopf bifurcation for the interior equilibrium with respect to maturation delay is explored, which shows that the maturation delay plays an important role in the dynamical behavior of three species system. Also obtain some threshold values of maturation delay for the stability-switching of the particular system. In succession, using the normal form theory and center manifold argument, we derive the explicit formulas which determine the stability and direction of bifurcating periodic solutions. Finally, a numerical simulation for supporting the theoretical analysis is given.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figure

Interacting populations : hosts and pathogens, prey and predators

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2007The interactions between populations can be positive, neutral or negative. Predation and parasitism are both relationships where one species benefits from the interaction at the expense of the other. Predators kill their prey instantly and use it only for food, whereas parasites use their hosts both as their habitat and their food. I am particularly interested in microbial parasites (including bacteria, fungi, viri, and some protozoans) since they cause many infectious diseases. This thesis considers two different points in the population-interaction spectrum and focuses on modeling host-pathogen and predator-prey interactions. The first part focuses on epidemiology, i. e., the dynamics of infectious diseases, and the estimation of parameters using the epidemiological data from two different diseases, phocine distemper virus that affects harbor seals in Europe, and the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in Cuba. The second part analyzes the stability of the predator-prey populations that are spatially organized into discrete units or patches. Patches are connected by dispersing individuals that may, or may not differ in the duration of their trip. This travel time is incorporated via a dispersal delay in the interpatch migration term, and has a stabilizing effect on predator-prey dynamics.This work has been supported by the US National Science Foundation (DEB-0235692), the US Environmental Protection Agency (R-82908901), the Ocean Ventures Fund, and the Academic Programs Office

Permanence and periodicity of a delayed ratio-dependent predator–prey model with Holling type functional response and stage structure

AbstractA periodic and delayed ratio-dependent predator–prey system with Holling type III functional response and stage structure for both prey and predator is investigated. It is assumed that immature predator and mature individuals of each species are divided by a fixed age, and immature predator do not have the ability to attack prey. Sufficient conditions are derived for the permanence and existence of positive periodic solution of the model. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the feasibility of our main results

Studying Both Direct and Indirect Effects in Predator-Prey Interaction

Studying and modelling the interaction between predators and prey have been one of the central topics in ecology and evolutionary biology. In this thesis, we study two different aspects of predator-prey interaction: direct effect and indirect effect. Firstly, we study the direct predation between predators and prey in a patchy landscape. Secondly, we study indirect effects between predators and prey. Thirdly, we extend our previous model by incorporating a stage-structure into prey. Finally, we further extend our previous model by incorporating spatial structures into modelling

On the interplay of speciation and dispersal: An evolutionary food web model in space

We introduce an evolutionary metacommunity of multitrophic food webs on several habitats coupled by migration. In contrast to previous studies that focus either on evolutionary or on spatial aspects, we include both and investigate the interplay between them. Locally, the species emerge, interact and go extinct according to the rules of the well-known evolutionary food web model proposed by Loeuille and Loreau in 2005. Additionally, species are able to migrate between the habitats. With random migration, we are able to reproduce common trends in diversity-dispersal relationships: Regional diversity decreases with increasing migration rates, whereas local diversity can increase in case of a low level of dispersal. Moreover, we find that the total biomasses in the different patches become similar even when species composition remains different. With adaptive migration, we observe species compositions that differ considerably between patches and contain species that are descendant from ancestors on both patches. This result indicates that the combination of spatial aspects and evolutionary processes affects the structure of food webs in different ways than each of them alone.Comment: under review at JT