Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School

College of Science and Mathematics

Department/Program

Applied Mathematics and Statistics

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Eric Forgoston

Committee Member

Lora Billings

Committee Member

Deepak Bal

Abstract

Previous research on the extinctions that occur in niche model food webs with deterministic and stochastic dynamics has shown that the structure of the food web can play an important role in extinction cascades. In this thesis, other types of synthetic food web models are considered, namely the cascade and generalized cascade models, and the extinction cascades of these food webs are compared with previous findings on the extinction cascades from the niche model. It was found that there are many similarities in the results for all three models, which prompted a closer analysis using food webs with deterministic dynamics. We developed a method to theoretically predict the survival or extinction of species in two- and three-species food webs, and compared the predictions with numerical results.

File Format

PDF

Share

COinS