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Resource quality dynamics and its implications
Yang Kuang
ASU
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Resource quality dynamics and its implications Yang Kuang ASU |
| ABSTRACT Abstract: Mathematical biologists have built on variants of the Lotka?Volterra equations and in almost all cases have adopted the pure physical science's single-currency (energy) approach to understanding population dynamics. However, biomass production requires more than just energy. It is crucially dependent on the chemical compositions of both the consumer species and food resources. In this talk, we explore how depicting organisms as built of more than one thing (for example, C and an important nutrient, such as P) in stoichiometrically explicit models results in qualitatively different and realistic predictions about the resulting dynamics. Stoichiometric models incorporate both food quantity and food quality effects in a single framework, appear to stabilize predator?prey systems while simultaneously producing rich dynamics with alternative domains of attraction and occasionally counterintuitive outcomes, such as coexistence of more than one predator species on a single-prey item and decreased herbivore performance in response to increased plant growth rate. |