Joint Effects Of Distinct Biotic Interactions And Dispersal On A Multi-species Ecological System
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Date
2021-10
Authors
Murtala Bello Aliyu
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
One of the central questions in ecology is how do we maintain community stability
and species coexistence mechanisms in a complex ecological community. It is
thought that the interplay between mutualism, competition, predation and local dispersal
support multi-species coexistence. In this thesis, we re-formulate a four-species
multiple interactions type (e.g., resource-competitor-exploiter-mutualist) system by incorporating
a spatial diffusion term to model local dispersal process. We then employ
this model to assess how the dynamics of dispersal, mutualism and competition shape
species coexistence and community stability in this ecological system. Our findings
show that the interplay of mutualism and competition affects the complexity of ecological
dynamics in this multiple interactions type system with local dispersal. Using
numerical simulation, we demonstrate how strong mutualism could stabilize the dynamics
of this multi-species community. Employing bifurcation analysis, we also discover
that mutualism essentially modifies this ecological community’s response to increasing
competitive pressure on the resource species. These insights are evident in our
findings through the emergence of intriguing dynamics and various bifurcations (e.g.,
subcritical and supercritical Hopfs, transcritical, saddle-node, transcritical-Hopf and
homoclinic bifurcations).
Description
Keywords
Effects Of Distinct Biotic Interactions , Dispersal On A Multi-species Ecological System