Related papers: Habitat fragmentation affects climate adaptation i…
The main topic of this thesis is the analysis of evolution equations reflecting issues in ecology and population dynamics. In mathematical modelling, the impact of environmental elements and the interaction between species is read into the…
In the past years, a remarkable mapping has been found between the dynamics of a population of M individuals undergoing random mutations and selection, and that of a single system in contact with a thermal bath with temperature 1/M. This…
Drylands are pattern-forming systems showing self-organized vegetation patchiness, multiplicity of stable states and fronts separating domains of alternative stable states. Pattern dynamics, induced by droughts or disturbances, can result…
The terrestrial water cycle links the soil and atmosphere moisture reservoirs through four fluxes: precipitation, evaporation, runoff, and atmospheric moisture convergence (net import of water vapor to balance runoff). Each of these…
We present an agent-based model inspired by the Evolutionary Minority Game (EMG), albeit strongly adapted to the case of competition for limited resources in ecology. The agents in this game become able, after some time, to predict the a…
Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…
Two methods of exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), analysis of spatial heterogeneity and dependence (auto-correlation), - - were applied to the cover patterns from ten paramo localities in the Central and Eastern cordilleras of…
Ecosystems are formed by networks of species and their interactions. Traditional models of such interactions assume a constant interaction strength between a given pair of species. However, there is often significant trait variation among…
Understanding the time evolution of fragmented animal populations and their habitats, connected by migration, is a problem of both theoretical and practical interest. This paper presents a method for calculating the time evolution of the…
The evolution of species habitat range is an important topic over a wide range of research fields. In higher organisms, habitat range evolution is generally associated with genetic events such as gene duplication. However, the specific…
We develop a set of equations to describe the population dynamics of many interacting species in food webs. Predator-prey interactions are non-linear, and are based on ratio-dependent functional responses. The equations account for…
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.…
Horizontal transfer (HT) of heritable information or `traits' (carried by genetic elements, endosymbionts, or culture) is widespread among living organisms. Yet current ecological and evolutionary theory addressing HT is limited. We present…
Do ecosystems primarily reflect evolutionary history or current environment? Predicting land-atmosphere exchange hinges on this unresolved question. Plant traits adapt to particular environments over evolutionary timescales, yet their…
Dispersal between different habitats influences the dynamics and stability of populations considerably. Furthermore, these effects depend on the local interactions of a population with other species. Here, we perform a general and…
Range expansion and range shifts are crucial population responses to climate change. Genetic consequences are not well understood but are clearly coupled to ecological dynamics that, in turn, are driven by shifting climate conditions. We…
Microorganisms live in environments that inevitably fluctuate between mild and harsh conditions. As harsh conditions may cause extinctions, the rate at which fluctuations occur can shape microbial communities and their diversity, but we…
We propose a model of multispecies populations surviving on distributed resources. System dynamics are investigated under changes in abiotic factors such as the climate, as parameterized through environmental temperature. In particular, we…
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) are widely used to study trait evolution. However, many evolutionary histories involve reticulate evolutionary scenarios, such as hybridization, that violate core assumptions of these methods. In this…
Resource are often not uniformly distributed within a population. Spatial variations of concentration of a resource, change the fitness of competing strategies locally. The notion of fitness varying with respect to both genotype and…