A dynamical system for neighborhoods in plant communities
Authored by Ulf Dieckmann, R Law
Date Published: 2000
DOI: 10.1890/0012-9658(2000)081[2137:adsfni]2.0.co;2
Sponsors:
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
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Abstract
How should plant ecologists scale up from the fine-scale events
affecting individual plants in small neighborhoods to the coarse-scale
dynamics of plant communities? We give here a dynamical system, derived
from an individual-based model, that captures the main effects of
spatial structure. The individual-based model describes a multispecies
plant community, living in a spatial domain, containing plants that (1)
reproduce and die with rates that depend on other individuals in a
specified neighborhood, and (2) move through seed dispersal and clonal
growth. Over the course Of time, substantial spatial structure can build
up in such a community due to local interactions and dispersal. The
dynamical system describes how the structure of local neighborhoods
changes over time, using the first and second spatial moments of the
individual-based model. We show, by means of an example of two competing
species, that the dynamical system gives a close approximation to the
behavior of the underlying individual-based model and that the changes
in local spatial structure as time progresses have fundamental effects
on the dynamics.
Tags
Competition
models
Biodiversity
ecosystems
pattern
growth
Trifolium-repens
Annuals
Pasture