PARENT SESSION
Poster Session # 1: Ecological Theory and Evolutionary Ecology.
Monday, August 4 Presentation from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. SITCC Exhibit Hall B.
Importance of predator and prey territory size on stability within a Rosezweig-MacArthur framework.
Nelson, Jennifer1, Wilson, William1, 1 Duke University, Durham, NC
ABSTRACT- Population dynamics of both predators and prey are affected by predator foraging behavior, specifically the scale of each species' territory relative to the predator's foraging scale. Previous theoretical models of predator-prey interactions, such as the Rosenzweig-MacArthur model, assume that predator and prey territories are of equal size, and both are equal to the predator foraging scale. Using deterministic models based on the ubiquitous Rosenzweig-MacArthur model, we analyzed the effect of a change in the spatial extent of predator foraging on the predator and prey population dynamics by allowing a predator forgaging site to overlap multiple prey sites in our model. We demonstrate an increase in the number of possible equilibria and changes in the stability of the preexisting ones. We also demonstrate, interestingly, that there is no change in the predator-prey coexistence region.
Key words: spatial, model, predator-prey, distribution