Evolutionary dynamics in predator and prey populations

Abstract

The main purpose of this project is to study the spatio-temporal dynamics of a three-species food chain. We shall use an individual based model, which consists in treating each member of the population explicitly. One of the main ingredients of the model is the possibility of local interactions, i.e., the restriction of predation to a limited region around each predator. The radius of the interaction region will be treated as a genetic characteristic of each individual, which might evolve through random mutations. We intend to investigate, among other things: (a) the formation of spatial patterns of population density; (b) the equilibrium distribution of interaction radii; (c) the appearance of chaotic dynamics. (AU)