Regensburg 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 31: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems III (joint with DY)
BP 31.3: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 14. März 2013, 15:30–15:45, H46
A new evolutionary food web model — •Korinna T. Allhoff1, Daniel Ritterskamp2, Christian Guill3, and Björn C. Rall3 — 1Institute of Condensed Matter Physics, TU Darmstadt — 2Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg — 3J. F. Blumenbach Institute for Zoology and Anthropology, Georg-August-University Göttingen
Understanding the conditions that are required for complex ecosystems to persist despite changes in species composition and anthropogenic perturbations, is of utmost importance in order to conserve these systems. Evolutionary food web models provide a mechanistic tool to understand how complex ecosystems emerge and how they react to changes in their composition. We present such an evolutionary food web model, where each species is characterized by three key traits: its own body mass, its preferred prey body mass, and the width of its potential prey body mass spectrum. The model contains allometric effects on feeding and competition interactions and determines dynamically whether a species is viable or goes extinct. The evolutionary processes that enable new species to enter the system as mutants of already existent ones, also follow allometric rules. The food web structure emerges as a highly nontrivial result from the combined effect of population dynamics and evolution. We present computer simulations of different model modifications and show how they influence network structure and stability.