Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 18: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems II (Joint Session DY/BP)

BP 18.2: Talk

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 14:15–14:30, ZEU 118

Impact of stochastic migration on species diversity in meta-foodwebs consisting of several patches — •Tatjana Thiel and Barbara Drossel — Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

The structure of space has an appreciable influence on the diversity of ecosystems. So far, there are only few theoretical studies investigating the population dynamics of foodwebs consisting of many species that can migrate between several patches, and in most of these models migration is a continuous, deterministic process. However, when migration events are rare (for instance because the patches are far apart), migration is a stochastic process and should be modelled accordingly.

For this purpose, we place a foodweb model consisting of many species on a spatial network of several patches and evaluate the stable configurations and long-time patterns that arise due to the population dynamics. This dynamics has a deterministic contribution from the processes within a patch, and a stochastic contribution due to migration events, which are implemented using the Gillespie algorithm.

We will discuss how the frequency of migration events impacts species diversity on local and regional scales. Furthermore, we investigate in particular the adiabatic limit in which population dynamics always reaches an equilibrium before the next migration event and we will discuss which long-term scenarios are possible.