Adaptive dynamics in predator and prey populations

In this work we study the spatial dynamics of two and three species food chains. We use an individual based model, which treats each member of the population explicitly. One of the model ingredients is the possibility to control the size of the predators foraging area, defined as a circular neighborhood, of radius R, around their home position. This home range size is treated as an adaptive, subject to small random variations along generations. We find that the predators evolve to a optimum predation radius R'. We develop analytical approximations using mean field and pair correlation techniques that indicate that the predation strategy is crucial for existence of this optimum radius. We also find that the population abundance distributions display a scale invariant power law tail, indicating self-organized criticality and that the occurrence of local outbreaks is an intrinsic characteristic of the system (AU)