Wednesday, December 12, 2001 -
D0700

Synchrony in transient predator-prey populations

Patrick C. Tobin and Ottar N. Bjornstad. The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Entomology, 501 ASI Bldg, University Park, PA

The spatial dynamics of populations are of considerable interest in ecology, and how these dynamics behave over temporal scales motivate questions of synchrony. Synchrony is increasingly recognized as having diverse effects on local temporal dynamics, motivating a range of new questions about how spatial pattern affects temporal processes. The lack of robust theoretical exploration of predator-prey dynamics over both spatial and temporal scales renders assessment of empirical data extremely difficult. Because of the importance of such interactions, we sought to (1) analyze synchrony in transient predator-prey field data and (2) develop a theoretical model of short and long transient predator-prey dynamics for use in studying their behavior in nonlinear dynamics and under varying predator and prey dispersal strategies.

Keywords: spatial dynamics, temporal dynamics

The ESA 2001 Annual Meeting - 2001: An Entomological Odyssey of ESA