Related papers: Extinctions in the random replicator model
The abundance of a species' population in an ecosystem is rarely stationary, often exhibiting large fluctuations over time. Using historical data on marine species, we show that the year-to-year fluctuations of population growth rate obey a…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…
We study a mechanistic mathematical model of extinction and coexistence in a generic hunter-prey ecosystem. The model represents typical scenarios of human invasion and environmental change, characteristic of the late Pleistocene,…
We consider the problem of extinction processes on random networks with a given structure. For sufficiently large well-mixed populations, the process of extinction of one or more state variable components occurs in the tail of the…
We present new theoretical and empirical results on the probability distributions of species persistence times in natural ecosystems. Persistence times, defined as the timespans occurring between species' colonization and local extinction…
We present a new model for extinction in which species evolve in bursts or `avalanches', during which they become on average more susceptible to environmental stresses such as harsh climates and so are more easily rendered extinct. Results…
A new model ecosystem consisting of many interacting species is introduced. The species are connected through a random matrix with a given connectivity. It is shown that the system is organized close to a boundary of marginal stability in…
We develop a mathematical model of extinction and coexistence in a generic predator-prey ecosystem composed of two herbivores in asymmetrical competition and a hunter exerting a predatory pressure on both species. With the aim of…
We study the dynamics of a second-order difference equation that is derived from a planar Ricker model of two-stage (e.g. adult, juvenile) biological populations. We obtain sufficient conditions for global convergence to zero in the…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
The composition of ecological communities varies not only between different locations but also in time. Understanding the fundamental processes that drive species towards rarity or abundance is crucial to assessing ecosystem resilience and…
The biological requirements for an ecosystem to develop and maintain species diversity are in general unknown. Here we consider a model ecosystem of sessile and mutually excluding organisms competing for space [Mathiesen et al. Phys. Rev.…
Transitions to absorbing states are of fundamental importance in non-equilibrium physics as well as ecology. In ecology, absorbing states correspond to the extinction of species. We here study the spatial population dynamics of three…
We review recent work aimed at modeling species extinction over geological time. We discuss a number of models which, rather than dealing with the direct causes of particular extinction events, attempt to predict overall statistical trends,…
How large ecosystems can create and maintain the remarkable biodiversity we see in nature is probably one of the biggest open questions in science, attracting attention from different fields, from Theoretical Ecology to Mathematics and…
Ecological systems are complex dynamical systems. Modelling efforts on ecosystems' dynamical stability have revealed that population dynamics, being highly nonlinear, can be governed by complex fluctuations. Indeed, experimental and field…
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…
Populations interact non-linearly and are influenced by environmental fluctuations. In order to have realistic mathematical models, one needs to take into account that the environmental fluctuations are inherently stochastic. Often,…
Due to the conventional distinction between ecological (rapid) and evolutionary (slow)timescales, ecological and population models to date have typically ignored the effects of evolution. Yet the potential for rapid evolutionary change has…
A cyclically dominating three-species ecosystem, modeled within the framework of rock-paper-scissor game, is studied in presence of natural death and an effect of the environment. The environmental impact is parameterized along with the…