Food-web formation with recursive evolutionary branching.
A reaction-diffusion model describing the evolutionary dynamics of a food-web was constructed. In this model, predator-prey relationships among organisms were determined by their position in a two-dimensional phenotype space defined by two traits: as prey and as predator. The mutation process is expressed with a diffusion process of biomass in the phenotype space. Numerical simulation of this model showed co-evolutionary dynamics of isolated phenotypic clusters, including various types of evolutionary branching, which were classified into branching as prey, branching as predators, and co-evolutionary branching of both prey and predators. A complex food-web develops with recursive evolutionary branching from a single phenotypic cluster. Biodiversity peaks at the medium strength of the predator-prey interaction, where the food-web is maintained at medium biomass by a balanced frequency between evolutionary branching and extinction.
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan. itoh9@dolphin.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Hiroshi C
HC
Ito
Takashi
T
Ikegami
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D018533:Biomass; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004463:Ecology; D020387:Food Chain; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010641:Phenotype; D011235:Predatory Behavior