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EcoSim is an individual-based predator-prey ecosystem simulation in which agents can evolve. It has been designed to investigate several broad ecological questions, as well as long-term evolutionary patterns and processes such as speciation and macroevolution.
Huffaker was expanding upon Gause's experiments by further introducing heterogeneity. Gause's experiments had found that predator and prey populations would become extinct regardless of initial population size. However, Gause also concluded that a predator–prey community could be self-sustaining if there were refuges for the prey population.
Hamilton also went on to model predation in two-dimensions, using a lion as an example. Movements that Hamilton proposed would lower an individual's domain of danger were largely based on the theory of marginal predation. This theory states that predators attack the closest prey, who are typically on the outside of an aggregation. [1]
In size-selective predation, predators select prey of a certain size. [81] Large prey may prove troublesome for a predator, while small prey might prove hard to find and in any case provide less of a reward. This has led to a correlation between the size of predators and their prey. Size may also act as a refuge for large prey. For example ...
The Lotka–Volterra predator-prey model makes a number of assumptions about the environment and biology of the predator and prey populations: [5] The prey population finds ample food at all times. The food supply of the predator population depends entirely on the size of the prey population.
If the basis for selection is at an individual level, altruism makes no sense at all. But universal selection at the group level (for the good of the species, not the individual) fails to pass the test of the mathematics of game theory and is certainly not the general case in nature. [30] Yet in many social animals, altruistic behaviour exists.
Predators receive a reproductive payoff, e, for consuming prey, and die at rate u. Making predation pressure a function of the ratio of prey to predators contrasts with the prey-dependent Lotka–Volterra equations, where the per capita effect of predators on the prey population is simply a function of the magnitude of the prey population g(N).
A structural diagram of the open ocean plankton ecosystem model of Fasham, Ducklow & McKelvie (1990). [1]An ecosystem model is an abstract, usually mathematical, representation of an ecological system (ranging in scale from an individual population, to an ecological community, or even an entire biome), which is studied to better understand the real system.