Diversity patterns from ecological models at dynamical equilibrium
Authored by M Lassig, U Bastolla, SC Manrubia, A Valleriani
Date Published: 2001
DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2001.2324
Sponsors:
No sponsors listed
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
We study a dynamic model of ecosystems where an immigration flux
assembles the species community and maintains its biodiversity. This
framework is particularly relevant for insular ecosystems. Population
dynamics is represented either as an individual-based model or as a set
of deterministic equations for population abundances. Local extinctions
and immigrations balance at a statistically stationary state where
biodiversity fluctuates around a constant mean value. We find a number
of scaling laws characterizing this stationary state. In particular, the
number of species increases as a power law of the immigration rate. With
additional assumptions on the immigration flux, we obtain species-area
relationships in agreement with observations for archipelagos. We also
find power-law distributions for species abundances and lifetimes. (C)
2001 Academic Press.
Tags
individual-based models
stability
population ecology
Extinction
Communities
Self-similarity
Curves
Immigration
Species-area relation
Large complex system