title: Home range evolution and its implication in population outbreaks.
abstract: We investigated the phenomenon of population outbreaks in a spatial predator-prey model, and we found that pattern formation and outbreaks occur if the predators have a limited neighbourhood of interaction with the preys. The outbreaks can display a scale-invariant power-law tail, indicating self-organized criticality. We have also studied the system from an evolutionary point of view, where the predator home range is a hereditary trait subjected to mutations. We found that mutation drives the predator home range area to an optimal value where pattern formation and outbreaks are still present, but the latter are much less frequent. We developed analytical approximations using mean field and pair correlation techniques that indicate that the predation strategy is crucial for existence of this optimal home range area.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Caixa Postal 6165, 13083-970 Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: S B L
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Araujo
authors.forename: G M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Viswanathan
authors.forename: M A M
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: de Aguiar
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D025041:Animal Migration; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003198:Computer Simulation; D020387:Food Chain; D006702:Homing Behavior; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009154:Mutation; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011235:Predatory Behavior