Extinction Dynamics of Cascade Food Webs
Presentation Type
Poster
Faculty Advisor
Eric Forgoston
Access Type
Event
Start Date
26-4-2023 12:30 PM
End Date
26-4-2023 1:30 PM
Description
Ecologists use a variety of synthetic food web networks (cascade, niche, generalized cascade, etc.) to predict key structural properties of complex food webs. These synthetic food webs are inherently unstable in the sense that incorporating dynamics, even deterministic dynamics, causes many species to go extinct. We consider the cascade food web with competitive Lotka-Volterra dynamics and investigate the effect of initial conditions, birth and death rates, species interaction rates, and predation efficiency on the extinction dynamics. We also derive analytical results for food chains, which are used to gain insight into the persistence of cascade food webs.
Extinction Dynamics of Cascade Food Webs
Ecologists use a variety of synthetic food web networks (cascade, niche, generalized cascade, etc.) to predict key structural properties of complex food webs. These synthetic food webs are inherently unstable in the sense that incorporating dynamics, even deterministic dynamics, causes many species to go extinct. We consider the cascade food web with competitive Lotka-Volterra dynamics and investigate the effect of initial conditions, birth and death rates, species interaction rates, and predation efficiency on the extinction dynamics. We also derive analytical results for food chains, which are used to gain insight into the persistence of cascade food webs.