Potts, J.R. orcid.org/0000-0002-8564-2904, Giunta, V. and Lewis, M.A. (2022) Beyond resource selection : emergent spatio–temporal distributions from animal movements and stigmergent interactions. Oikos, 2022 (6). e09188. ISSN 0030-1299
Abstract
A principal concern of ecological research is to unveil the causes behind observed spatio–temporal distributions of species. A key tactic is to correlate observed locations with environmental features, in the form of resource selection functions or other correlative species distribution models. In reality, however, the distribution of any population both affects and is affected by those surrounding it, creating a complex network of feedbacks causing emergent spatio–temporal features that may not correlate with any particular aspect of the underlying environment. Here, we study the way in which the movements of populations in response to one another can affect the spatio–temporal distributions of ecosystems. We construct a stochastic individual-based modelling (IBM) framework, based on stigmergent interactions (i.e. organisms leave marks which cause others to alter their movements) between and within populations. We show how to gain insight into this IBM via mathematical analysis of a partial differential equation (PDE) system given by a continuum limit. We show how the combination of stochastic simulations of the IBM and mathematical analysis of PDEs can be used to categorise emergent patterns into homogeneous versus heterogeneous, stationary versus perpetually-fluctuating and aggregation versus segregation. In doing so, we develop techniques for understanding spatial bifurcations in stochastic IBMs, grounded in mathematical analysis. Finally, we demonstrate through a simple example how the interplay between environmental features and between-population stigmergent interactions can give rise to predicted spatial distributions that are quite different to those predicted purely by accounting for environmental covariates.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. Oikos published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). |
Keywords: | animal movement; animal space use; individual based models; partial differential equations; resource selection; species distribution models; stigmergy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EP/V002988/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 05 May 2022 10:06 |
Last Modified: | 23 Feb 2023 12:33 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/oik.09188 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:186379 |