Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 35: Posters: Statistical Physics, Evolution, and Networks

BP 35.14: Poster

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 17:15–20:00, Poster B2

Coexistence and phenology of mass-selective predators — •Laurin Lengert, Barbara Drossel, and Christian Guill — TU Darmstadt, Hessen, Deutschland

We study the phenology of predator species, i.e. the chronological succession of species that consume the same prey species within a year. Phenology is modeled by using body-mass dependent attack rates. While prey individuals that are very small compared to predators can easily hide from predators, larger prey individuals have a higher chance to directly escape attacks. This leads to an unimodal capture rate as function of predator and prey size with a maximum at intermediate predator-prey body-mass ratios.

We model the prey to grow during the observed period while the larger predators have a constant body mass (assuming that new born predator individuals are hatching and growing during a different period of the year). Differently sized predator species thus differ in the time when their attack rates on the prey species are maximal.

We analyze the effect of predator phenology on the system's capability to support several predator species with different mean individual body masses and present results concerning minimal size differences between coexisting predators as well as potential invasion scenarios.