Population spatial structure

Marine communities are complicated biological systems of populations of individual species. As a result of their interaction, communities are in dynamic development. Their spatial structure is mostly determined by the composition of numerous biotic and abiotic factors, which depend on the totality of oceanic parameters. The latter are determined by the laws of general circulation of ocean waters, including tides and ebbs, zones of convergence and divergence, wind, and thermohaline currents. 

Effects of Toxicants upon Spatially Structured Populations... 

The next sections discuss the potential effects of toxicants upon populations that vary in distribution in a landscape. The first part describes the types of spatial structure, and the next section discusses the use of metapopulation models in examining the potential dynamics due to toxicants. 

Five general categories of spatial structure can be identified for the purposes of investigating the effects of toxicants upon populations (McLaughlin and Landis 2000). 

McLaughlin, J.F. and W.G. Landis. 2000. Effects of environmental contaminants in spatially structured environments. Environmental Contaminants in Terrestrial Vertebrates Effects on Populations. Communities, and Ecosystems. Peter H. Albers et al., Eds. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Pensacola, FL. 

Although it is computationally efficient, the IFM ignores many of the demographic attributes of prairie dogs and fleas that may determine potential plague threat to humans. Thus, a series of more detailed population-level epidemiological models (e.g., Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered, or SIR models) can be used to determine the influence of the spatial structure of prairie dog populations (in terms... 

Models are by definition a simplification of reality. The model presented here was detailed in terms of population age structure and spatial structure (and movement), but many other factors were omitted or simplified. In the present study we implemented a simple link between the fate of a chemical and the effects on Asellus individuals in the model. 

When the chaotic dispersion is slow the populations of the three strains oscillates periodically in time, each strain becoming temporarily dominant in a cyclic fashion (Fig. 8.8). The chaotic dispersion also affects the spatial structure, by stretching the patches occupied by different strains into elongated filaments (Fig. 8.9). Thus the effect of chaotic dispersion is to synchronize the local oscillations over the whole system. The amplitude of the oscillations increases with the dispersion rate and eventually leads to the extinction of two of... 

D.M. Dubois. Simulation of the spatial structuration of a patch of prey-predator plankton populations in the Southern Bight of the North Sea. Mem. Soc. Roy. Sci. Liege Ser. 6, 7 75-82, 1975b. 

The population models which were presented in the previous sections describe a single isolated patch or community. We now add spatial structure by analysing a set of patch models which are interconnected by diffusive... 

Thomas, C.D., Kunin, W.E. (1999). The spatial structure of populations. Journal of Animal Ecology 68,... 

Gilpin M E (1987) Spatial structure and population vulnerability. In Viable Populations for Conservation (ed M E Soule) ppl25-139. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 

In addition to the direct utility of mathematical models in the analysis of complex chemical systems a unified conceptual framework is offered to the mathematical treatment of problems of chemical kinetics and related areas in biomathematics. Biochemical control processes, oscillation and fluctuation phenomena in neurochemical systems, coexistence and extinction in populations, prebiological evolution and certain ecological problems of Lake j Balaton can be treated in terms of this framework. Though the main body of/ the book deals with spatially homogeneous systems, spatial structures in chemical systems, pattern formation and morphogenesis related to reaction-diffusion models are also mentioned briefly. 

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