Dinâmica de populações em redes ecológicas : persistências, catástrofes e extinções / Population dynamics in ecological networks : persistence, catastrophes and extinctions
AUTOR(ES)
Andréia Nalú Soares Hisi
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
2011
RESUMO
All living organisms interact with individuals of its own species and also with those of other species, forming a complex network of interactions that have an important role in the preservation of the biodiversity. Understanding the underlying behavior and stability of these systems is of fundamental importance to the conservation of these resources. In this work we consider a network with only four species, comprising two predator-prey pairs connected, where the predator of the first pair interacts with the prey of the second pair. The intensity of this interaction is an important parameter of the model. We explore the system behavior under different intensities of coupling and study the dynamics of survival and extinction. We analyze situations in which the four species have initial populations smaller than the corresponding equilibrium values, simulating catastrophic events in which these abundances are reduced due to human action or environmental changes. This type of initial condition makes the populations oscillate before re-equilibrating, sometimes reducing its value to only a small fraction of the initial population, bringing them in practice to extinction. In these analysis we found unexpected effects, such as the survival of the prey that is most preyed. From this study, we expanded the network of two pairs of predators and preys to three, four and five pairs, following the same methods of analysis. Finally, we conducted a brief survey of a prehistoric network extinct in the late Pleistocene
ASSUNTO(S)
sistemas complexos sistemas dinâmicos ecologia complex systems dyamical systems ecology
