Related papers: The spatial dynamics of ecosystem engineers
The problem of natural selection in dispersal-structured populations consisting of individuals characterized by different diffusion coefficients is studied. The competition between the organisms is taken into account through the assumption…
Species extinction occurs regularly and unavoidably in ecological systems. The time scales for extinction can broadly vary and inform on the ecosystem's stability. We study the spatio-temporal extinction dynamics of a paradigmatic…
1. Theoretical models pertaining to feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes are prevalent in multiple biological fields. An integrative overview is currently lacking, due to little crosstalk between the fields and the use of…
Advances in synthetic biology allow us to engineer bacterial collectives with pre-specified characteristics. However, the behavior of these collectives is difficult to understand, as cellular growth and division as well as extra-cellular…
Rapidly mutating pathogens may be able to persist in the population and reach an endemic equilibrium by escaping hosts' acquired immunity. For such diseases, multiple biological, environmental and population-level mechanisms determine the…
Theoretical ecologists have long sought to understand how the persistence of populations depends on biotic and abiotic factors. Classical work showed that demographic stochasticity causes the mean time to extinction to increase…
Ecosystems dynamics is often considered as driven by a coupling of species' resource consumption and its population size dynamics. Such resource-population dynamics is captured by MacArthur-type models. One biologically relevant feature…
The apparent stability of population oscillations in ecological systems is a long-standing puzzle. A generic solution for this problem is suggested here. The stabilizing mechanism involves the combined effect of spatial migration,…
We present a spatial, individual-based predator-prey model in which dispersal is dependent on the local community. We determine species suitability to the biotic conditions of their local environment through a time and space varying fitness…
We introduce and study a stochastic model for the dynamics of colonial species, which reproduce through fission or fragmentation. The fission rate depends on the relative sizes of colonies in the population, and the growth rate of colonies…
This paper investigates the dynamics of vegetation patterns in water-limited ecosystems using a generalized Klausmeier model that incorporates non-local plant dispersal within a finite habitat. We establish the well-posedness of the system…
Mathematical models of spatial population dynamics typically focus on the interplay between dispersal events and birth/death processes. However, for many animal communities, significant arrangement in space can occur on shorter timescales,…
The basic mechanics of evolution have been understood since Darwin. But debate continues over whether macroevolutionary phenomena are driven primary by the fitness structure of genotype space or by ecological interaction. In this paper we…
Habitat loss is one of the biggest threats facing plant species nowadays. We formulate a simple mathematical model of seed dispersal on reduced habitats to discuss survival of the species in relation to the habitat size and seeds production…
We study how changes in population size and fluctuating environmental conditions influence the establishment of seed banks in plants. Our model is a modification of the Wright-Fisher model with seed bank, introduced by Kaj, Krone and…
The enigmatic stability of population oscillations within ecological systems is analyzed. The underlying mechanism is presented in the framework of two interacting species free to migrate between two spatial patches. It is shown that that…
Ecological resilience refers to the ability of a system to retain its state when subject to state variables perturbations or parameter changes. While understanding and quantifying resilience is crucial to anticipate the possible regime…
We have simulated the evolution of age structured populations whose individuals represented by their diploid genomes were distributed on a square lattice. The environmental conditions on the whole territory changed simultaneously in the…
Natural ecosystems, in particular on the microbial scale, are inhabited by a large number of species. The population size of each species is affected by interactions of individuals with each other and by spatial and temporal changes in…
Evolutionary game dynamics is one of the most fruitful frameworks for studying evolution in different disciplines, from Biology to Economics. Within this context, the approach of choice for many researchers is the so-called replicator…