title: Predator-prey quasicycles from a path-integral formalism.
abstract: The existence of beyond mean-field quasicycle oscillations in a simple spatial model of predator-prey interactions is derived from a path-integral formalism. The results agree substantially with those obtained from analysis of similar models using system size expansions of the master equation. In all of these analyses, the discrete nature of predator-prey populations and finite-size effects lead to persistent oscillations in time, but spatial patterns fail to form. The path-integral formalism goes beyond mean-field theory and provides a focus on individual realizations of the stochastic time evolution of population not captured in the standard master-equation approach.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Reynolds
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D013269:Stochastic Processes