Related papers: Mathematical Modeling on Obligate Mutualism: Inter…
A colony of the queenless ant species, \emph{Pristomyrmex punctatus}, can broadly be seen as consisting of small-body sized worker ants and relatively larger body-sized cheater ants. Hence, in the presence of inter-colony migration, a set…
We propose a system of differential equations modeling the competition between two obligate mutualistic species for a single nutrient in a chemostat. Each species promotes the growth of the other, and growth occurs only in the presence of…
We examine the two-dimensional extension of the model of Kessler and Sander of competition between two species identical except for dispersion rates. In this class of models, the spatial inhomogeneity of reproduction rates gives rise to an…
Modern ecology has re-emphasized the need for a quantitative understanding of the original 'survival of the fittest theme' based on analyzis of the intricate trade-offs between competing evolutionary strategies that characterize the…
We develop a spatially realistic model of mutualistic metacommunities that exploits the joint structure of spatial and interaction networks. This model exhibits a sharp transition between a stable non-null equilibrium state and a global…
An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…
Mutualistic networks have attracted increasing attention in the ecological literature in the last decades as they play a key role in the maintenance of biodiversity. Here, we develop an analytical framework to study the structural stability…
The role of species interactions in controlling the interplay between the stability of an ecosystem and its biodiversity is still not well understood. The ability of ecological communities to recover after a small perturbation of the…
Synchronized short-term activity cycles are a prominent feature in the nests of certain ant species, but their functional significance remains controversial. This study investigates whether synchronization enhances spatial accessibility…
Life-history tradeoffs among species are major drivers of community assembly. Most studies investigate how tradeoffs promote deterministic coexistence of species. It remains unclear how tradeoffs may instead promote historically contingent…
We study a set of six-species ecological models where each species has two predators and two preys. On a square lattice the time evolution is governed by iterated invasions between the neighboring predator-prey pairs chosen at random and by…
Evolutionary transitions among ecological interactions are widely known, although their detailed dynamics remain absent for most population models. Adaptive dynamics has been used to illustrate how the parameters of population models might…
Cooperative behavior is widespread in nature, even though cooperating individuals always run the risk to be exploited by free-riders. Population structure effectively promotes cooperation given that a threshold in the level of cooperation…
Resource-based competition between microorganisms species in continuous culture has been studied extensively both experimentally and theoretically, mostly for bacteria through Monod and and Contois "constant yield" models, or for…
The architecture of bipartite networks linking two classes of constituents is affected by the interactions within each class. For the bipartite networks representing the mutualistic relationship between pollinating animals and plants, it…
The self-protection of alliances against external invaders is a key concept behind the maintenance of biodiversity in the face of natural selection. But since these alliances, which can be formed by different numbers of competitors, can…
The phenomenon of apoptosis observed in cell cultures consists in the fact that unless cells permanently receive a "Stay alive" signal from their neighbors, they are bound to die. A natural question is whether manifestations of this…
The ubiquitous existence of microbial communities marks the importance of understanding how species interact within the community to coexist and their spatial organization. We study a two-species mutualistic cross-feeding model through a…
We present a new kinetic equation for cell migration driven by mechanical interactions with the substrate, an effect not previously captured in kinetic models, and essential for explaining observed collective behaviors such as those in…
To examine the co-evolution of quantitative traits in hosts and parasites, we present and study a co-evolutionary model of a social parasite-host system that incorporates (1) ecological dynamics that feed back into their co-evolutionary…