Multi-behavioral strategies in a predator-prey game: an evolutionary algorithm analysis
Authored by William A Mitchell
Date Published: 2009
DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2009.17204.x
Sponsors:
United States National Science Foundation (NSF)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
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Abstract
I investigated a multi-behavioral game between predators and prey that
integrated both pre-encounter and post-encounter behaviors. These
behaviors included landscape-scale movements by predators and prey, a
type of prey vigilance that increases immediately after an encounter and
then decays over time ('ratcheting vigilance'), and predator management
of prey vigilance. I analyzed the game using a computer-based
evolutionary algorithm. This algorithm embedded an individual-based
model of ecological interactions within a dynamic adaptive process of
mutation and selection. I investigated how evolutionarily stable
strategies (ESS) varied with the predators' learning ability, killing
efficiency, density and rate of movement. I found that when predators
learn prey location, random prey movement can be an ESS. Increased
predator killing efficiency reduced prey movement, but only if the rate
of predator movement was low. Predators countered ratcheting vigilance
by delaying their follow-up attacks; however, this delay was reduced in
the presence of additional predators. The interdependence of pre-and
post-encounter behaviors revealed by the evolutionary algorithm suggests
an intricate co-evolution of multi-behavioral predator-prey behavioral
strategies.
Tags
Dynamics
Risk
ecology
Vigilance
Habitat selection games
Waiting game