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1.
In this paper we investigate the consequences of size-dependent competition among the individuals of a consumer population by analyzing the dynamic properties of a physiologically structured population model. Only 2 size-classes of individuals are distinguished: juveniles and adults. Juveniles and adults both feed on one and the same resource and hence interact by means of exploitative competition. Juvenile individuals allocate all assimilated energy into development and mature on reaching a fixed developmental threshold. The combination of this fixed threshold and the resource-dependent developmental rate, implies that the juvenile delay between birth and the onset of reproduction may vary in time. Adult individuals allocate all assimilated energy to reproduction. Mortality of both juveniles and adults is assumed to be inversely proportional to the amount of energy assimilated. In this setting we study how the dynamics of the population are influenced by the relative foraging capabilities of juveniles and adults.In line with results that we previously obtained in size-structured consumer-resource models with pulsed reproduction, population cycles primarily occur when either juveniles or adults have a distinct competitive advantage. When adults have a larger per capita feeding rate and are hence competitively superior to juveniles, population oscillations occur that are primarily induced by the fact that the duration of the juvenile period changes with changing food conditions. These cycles do not occur when the juvenile delay is a fixed parameter. When juveniles are competitively superior, two different types of population fluctuations can occur: (1) rapid, low-amplitude fluctuations having a period of half the juvenile delay and (2) slow, large-amplitude fluctuations characterized by a period, which is roughly equal to the juvenile delay. The analysis of simplified versions of the structured model indicates that these two types of oscillations also occur if mortality and/or development is independent of food density, i.e. in a situation with a constant juvenile developmental delay and a constant, food-independent background mortality. Thus, the oscillations that occur when juveniles are more competitive are induced by the juvenile delay per se. When juveniles exert a larger foraging pressure on the shared resource, maturation implies an increase not only in adult density, but also in food density and consequently fecundity. Our analysis suggests that this correlation in time between adult density and fecundity is crucial for the occurrence of population cycles when juveniles are competitively superior.  相似文献   

2.
Abstract.— Here I study a kin selection model of reproductive effort, the allocation of resources to fecundity versus survival, in a patch-structured population. Breeding females remain in the same patch for life. Offspring have costly, partial long-distance dispersal and compete for breeding sites, which become vacant upon the death of previous occupants. The main result is that the evolutionarily stable reproductive effort decreases as offspring dispersal rate increases. The result can be understood as follows: In a well-mixed population with global competition, neither adults nor juveniles compete with relatives, but in a patch-structured population with dispersal restricted to the juvenile phase, juveniles experience relatively less competition with relatives than adults, thus making juveniles relatively more valuable. Because this asymmetry between adults and juveniles decreases with the dispersal rate, so does the evolutionarily stable level of allocation to fecundity.  相似文献   

3.
A difference equation model for the dynamics of a semelparous size-structured species consisting of juvenile and adult individuals is derived and studied. The adult population consists of two size classes, a smaller class and a larger more fertile class. Negative feedback occurs through slowed juvenile growth due to increased total population levels during the developmental period and consequently a smaller adult size at maturation. Intra-specific competition coefficients are size dependent and measure the strength of intra-specific competition between juveniles and adults. It is shown that equilibrium states in which adults and juveniles occur together at all times are in general destabilized by significantly increased juvenilevs adults competition with the result that stable periodic cycles appear, in which the generations alternate in time and hence avoid competition. This result supports the tenet that intra-specific competition between juveniles and adults is destabilizing. Exceptions to this destabilization principle are found, however, in which populations exhibiting non-equilibrium, aperiodic dynamics can be equilibrated by increase competition between juveniles and adults. This occurs, for example, when adult fertility and competition coefficients are significantly size class dependent. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Applied Mathematics Division and the Population Biology/Ecology Division of the National Science Foundation under NSF grant No. DMS-8902508. Research supported by the Department of Energy under contracts W-7405-ENG-36 and KC-07-01-01.  相似文献   

4.
We formulate and analyze an archetypal consumer-resource model in terms of ordinary differential equations that consistently translates individual life history processes, in particular food-dependent growth in body size and stage-specific differences between juveniles and adults in resource use and mortality, to the population level. This stage-structured model is derived as an approximation to a physiologically structured population model, which accounts for a complete size-distribution of the consumer population and which is based on assumptions about the energy budget and size-dependent life history of individual consumers. The approximation ensures that under equilibrium conditions predictions of both models are completely identical. In addition we find that under non-equilibrium conditions the stage-structured model gives rise to dynamics that closely approximate the dynamics exhibited by the size-structured model, as long as adult consumers are superior foragers than juveniles with a higher mass-specific ingestion rate. When the mass-specific intake rate of juvenile consumers is higher, the size-structured model exhibits single-generation cycles, in which a single cohort of consumers dominates population dynamics throughout its life time and the population composition varies over time between a dominance by juveniles and adults, respectively. The stage-structured model does not capture these dynamics because it incorporates a distributed time delay between the birth and maturation of an individual organism in contrast to the size-structured model, in which maturation is a discrete event in individual life history. We investigate model dynamics with both semi-chemostat and logistic resource growth.  相似文献   

5.
Two models are made to account for the dynamics of a consumer-resource system in which the consumers are divided into juveniles and adults. The resource grows logistically and a type II functional response is assumed for consumers. Resource levels determine fecundity and maturation rates in one model, and mortality rates in the other. The analysis of the models shows that the condition for establishment of consumers is that the product of per capita fecundity rate and maturation rates is higher than the product of juvenile and adult per capita decay rates at a resource level equal to its carrying capacity. This result imposes a minimal abundance of resource able to maintain the consumers. A second result shows an equilibrium stage structure, with a small instability when juveniles and adults mean saturation constants are different. The implications of these results for community dynamics are discussed.  相似文献   

6.
Destabilizing effect of cannibalism on a structured predator-prey system   总被引:14,自引:0,他引:14  
The dynamics of a predator-prey system, where the predator has two stages, a juvenile stage and a mature stage, are modelled by a system of three ordinary differential equations. The mature predators prey on the juvenile predators in addition to the prey. If the mortality rate of juveniles is low and/or the recruitment rate to the mature population is high, then there is a stable equilibrium with all three population sizes positive. On the other hand, if the mortality rate of juveniles is high and/or the recruitment rate to the mature population is low, then the equilibrium will be stable for low levels of cannibalism, but a loss of stability by a Hopf bifurcation will take place as the level of cannibalism increases. Numerical studies indicate that a stable limit cycle appears. Cannibalism can therefore be a destabilizing force in a predator-prey system.  相似文献   

7.
Human harvesting is often a major mortality factor and, hence, an important proximate factor driving the population dynamics of large mammals. Several selective harvesting regimes focus on removing animals with low reproductive value, such as “antlered” harvests in North America and juvenile harvesting in many European countries. Despite its widespread use and assumed impact, the scientific basis of juvenile harvesting is scattered in the literature and not empirically well-documented. We give the first overview of demographic, evolutionary and practical management arguments for selective harvesting of juveniles. Furthermore, we empirically test two demographic arguments based on harvest statistics of Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) in seven European countries. P1: Harvesting juveniles has little influence on harvest growth compared with harvesting adult females due to the lower reproductive value of juveniles than adult females; P2: Harvesting of juveniles dampens variance in harvest due to lower and more variable natural survival rates of juveniles compared with adults. We found that harvesting juveniles has little effect on harvest growth rate, while harvesting adult females has a significant negative effect (consistent with P1), but that increasing the proportion of juveniles in the harvest did not decrease the variability in harvest between years (P2 not supported). Based on our empirical findings and overview of arguments, we discuss how the merits of juvenile harvesting may vary over time as populations move from a low density to a very high density state.  相似文献   

8.
Co-evolution of seed size and seed predation   总被引:3,自引:0,他引:3  
Using the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) approach in a model for the co-evolution of seed size and seed predation, I show that seed size variation within individual plants is favoured if there is a trade-off in the predator's attack rate for different seed sizes. A single seed size is not evolutionarily stable because a predator that is optimally adapted to one particular seed size cannot prevent invasion by plants with a different seed size. The model generates the following predictions. The ESS consists of a continuous range of seed sizes. Small seeds tend to be attacked more frequently than big seeds. Plants with many resources and plants with low (frequency-independent) juvenile mortality have more variable seeds than plants with few resources and a high juvenile mortality. Seed size variation is higher in fluctuating populations regulated by seed predation alone than in stable populations (partially) regulated by seedling competition. Predator searching behaviour does not directly affect the ESS seed size range, but may have an indirect effect by affecting population stability or the significance of seedling competition as a population regulating mechanism. Moreover, seed size distributions are found to be more skewed in favour of small seeds if predation is spatially non-uniform than if predation is more even. Application of the model to systems of several co-evolving plant and predator species is discussed.  相似文献   

9.
Ecosystems are often indirectly connected through consumers with complex life cycles (CLC), in which different life stages inhabit different ecosystems. Using a structured consumer resource model that accounts for the independent effects of two resources on consumer growth and reproductive rates, we show that such indirect connections between ecosystems can result in alternative stable states characterized by adult-dominated and juvenile-dominated consumer populations. As a consequence, gradual changes in ecosystem productivity or mortality rates of the consumer can lead to dramatic and abrupt regime shifts across different ecosystems, hysteresis and counterintuitive changes in the consumer abundances. Whether these counter intuitive or abrupt responses occur depend on the relative productivity of both habitats and which consumer life-stage inhabits the manipulated ecosystem. These results demonstrate the strong yet complex interactions between ecosystems coupled through consumers with CLC and the need to think across ecosystems to reliably predict the consequences of natural or anthropogenic changes.  相似文献   

10.
Summary The demographic and ecological characteristics of island populations of small mammals have received increasing attention in recent years, but few studies have compared the behavioral characteristics of island populations with those of mainland populations. Behavior is considered an important variable because it is believed by many to be a crucial factor affecting the population dynamics and demography of natural populations. In particular, among many species of rodents, the social behavior of adults towards juveniles is cited as an important factor influencing dispersal patterns and population regulation. The present study compares social interactions between adults and juveniles of island and mainland populations of the deermouse Peromyscus maniculatus, and attempts to relate differences in behavior to the demographic differences between the two populations. Adult mice were trapped on the mainland of British Columbia and on one of the Gulf Islands off the British Columbia coast, and allowed to breed in the laboratory. Male and female juveniles from both populations were then tested with their own parents and with unrelated male and female adults. The results demonstrate that island adults show almost no aggression towards either own or unrelated young. Mainland adults likewise show little aggression towards their own young, but a proportion of the population, consisting of both male and female adults, shows severe aggression towards unrelated juveniles of both sexes. These results suggest four major conclusions: 1) behavior may be the mechanism responsible for the demographic differences reported for these island and mainland populations; 2) female aggression may be a more important factor in deermouse population dynamics than has been previously recognized; 3) since parents show little aggression towards their own young, adult aggression may be a significant factor in juvenile mortality and emigration only after juveniles have initiated dispersal away from their natal sites; and 4) adult aggression controls the number of both male and female juveniles which are recruited into the population.  相似文献   

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