Biology – Quantitative Biology – Populations and Evolution
Scientific paper
2011-04-21
Biology
Quantitative Biology
Populations and Evolution
For the Record, ongoing project, basic ideas are spelled out
Scientific paper
In a class of natural predator-prey models, two parameters are included. They are the prey's carrying capacity and prey's half-saturation for predation. Intuitively, increasing the carrying capacity due to enrichment of the prey's environment should lead to a more stable predator-prey system. Analytically, it turns out that increasing the carrying capacity always leads to an unstable predator-prey system that is susceptible to extinction from environmental random perturbations. This is the so-called paradox of enrichment. Our resolution here rests upon a closer investigation on a dimensionless number $H$ formed from the carrying capacity and the prey's half-saturation. By recasting the models into dimensionless forms, the models are in fact governed by a few dimensionless numbers including $H$. The effects of the two parameters: carrying capacity and half-saturation are incorporated into the number $H$. In fact, increasing the carrying capacity is equivalent (i.e. has the same effect on $H$) to decreasing the half-saturation which implies more aggressive predation. Since there is no paradox between more aggressive predation and instability of the predator-prey system, the paradox of enrichment is resolved. The instability of the predator-prey system is characterized by the existence of a stable limit cycle in the phase plane, which gets closer and closer to the predator axis and prey axis. Due to random environmental perturbations, this can lead to extinction. We also further explore spatially dependent models for which the phase space is infinite dimensional. The spatially independent limit cycle which is stable under the spatially independent dynamics, can become unstable under the spatially dependent dynamics due to parametric resonance. Therefore, spatial dependence can also avoid extinction.
Feng Z. C.
Li Yanguang Charles
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