Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation
Description
Predator-prey systems aim at modelling the interactions between species which interfere with each other through predation. In particular, the resource- consumer interaction between the two species is described by the functional response, that is the average number of prey caught per predator per unit of time. Well known examples are the functions given by Holling, Beddington and DeAngelis. Phenomenological models, which consider the population characteristics, have been widely used, but they lack of interpretation under the point of view of the individual processes. Therefore, my interest towards a mechanistic approach for the derivation of the functions describing the popu- lation dynamics is justied by the necessity of interpreting all the parameters involved in the model. I will introduce a formal method for the derivation of the functional response, given a system of fast state transitions of the prey and the predator between dierent behavioural states, while the total densities of both species are constant. I will show how this method can also apply for the derivation of the prey or predator's demographic numerical response, such that its relationship with the functional response is no longer linear.