The complicated population interactions of predator and prey species have long intrigued scientists, who have developed mathematical models that predict how those populations interact. They've had difficulty, however, demonstrating that such predictions reflect reality for species more complex than single-celled organisms.
Now, a team of scientists from Cornell University and North Carolina State University has done exactly that. Their laboratory research on the population interactions of tiny multicellular planktonic rotifers and the single-celled green algae on which they feed is highlighted in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Science.
Their research is the first to use long-duration experiments of multiple interacting species to verify a mathematical population model. Their conclusion: a few straightforward rules can govern predator-prey population dynamics for species more complex than single-celled bacteria and protists.
"We combine theoretical and empirical approaches to demonstrate that a few simple mechanistic processes underlie complex multispecies dynamics and that a correspondingly simple model is a sound tool for investigating community properties," the researchers write in the Science article.
The co-authors on the Science paper are Dr. Gregor F. Fussmann, a post-doctoral associate at Cornell University; Dr. Stephen P. Ellner, formerly a professor of biomathematics at NC State and now at Cornell; Kyle W. Shertzer, a biomathematics doctoral candidate at NC State; and Dr. Nelson G. Hairston Jr., Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Environmental Science at Cornell.
Their research indicates that simple mathematical models may be useful in helping to predict the population dynamics of a variety of multicellular organisms in the natural world, such as during outbreaks of agricultural pest species. And it could serve as a launching point for studies on the possible co-evolution of predator and prey species, and on the possibility that some
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Contact: Kyle W. Shertzer
kwshertz@unity.ncsu.edu
919-515-2543
North Carolina State University
15-Nov-2000