SPATIO-TEMPORAL CHAOS IN AN ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITY AS A RESPONSE TO UNFAVOURABLE ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES

Sergei V. Petrovskii and Horst Malchow
Additional contact information
Sergei V. Petrovskii: Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nakhimovsky Prospekt 36, Moscow 117218, Russia
Horst Malchow: Institute of Environmental Systems Research, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Osnabrück University, Artilleriestr. 34, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2001, vol. 04, issue 02n03, 227-249

Abstract: The impact of ecological chaos on population dynamics has been an issue of intense discussion over the last decade. While many authors consider chaotic dynamics as a favourable factor facilitating species biodiversity, there is also a strong opinion that chaos may enhance population extinction. In this paper we show that chaotic spatio-temporal dynamics in an ecological community can arise as a response of the community to unfavourable environmental changes. Appearing in that way, chaos can prevent species extinction in a situation when it would be inevitable otherwise. We also show that an essential consequence of chaotic dynamics is that the issue of species extinction is subject to the size of the domain inhabited by the population, the extinction more likely happens in a small domain than in a large one.

Keywords: Population dynamics; prey-predator interaction; reaction-diffusion system; spatio-temporal chaos; species extinction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525901000164
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:04:y:2001:i:02n03:n:s0219525901000164

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525901000164

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().