No Arabic abstract
We review recent results obtained from simple individual-based models of biological competition in which birth and death rates of an organism depend on the presence of other competing organisms close to it. In addition the individuals perform random walks of different types (Gaussian diffusion and L{e}vy flights). We focus on how competition and random motions affect each other, from which spatial instabilities and extinctions arise. Under suitable conditions, competitive interactions lead to clustering of individuals and periodic pattern formation. Random motion has a homogenizing effect and then delays this clustering instability. When individuals from species differing in their random walk characteristics are allowed to compete together, the ones with a tendency to form narrower clusters get a competitive advantage over the others. Mean-field deterministic equations are analyzed and compared with the outcome of the individual-based simulations.
The spatio-temporal arrangement of interacting populations often influences the maintenance of species diversity and is a subject of intense research. Here, we study the spatio-temporal patterns arising from the cyclic competition between three species in two dimensions. Inspired by recent experiments, we consider a generic metapopulation model comprising rock-paper-scissors interactions via dominance removal and replacement, reproduction, mutations, pair-exchange and hopping of individuals. By combining analytical and numerical methods, we obtain the models phase diagram near its Hopf bifurcation and quantitatively characterize the properties of the spiraling patterns arising in each phase. The phases characterizing the cyclic competition away far from the Hopf bifurcation (at low mutation rate) are also investigated. Our analytical approach relies on the careful analysis of the properties of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation derived through a controlled (perturbative) multiscale expansion around the models Hopf bifurcation. Our results allows us to clarify when spatial rock-paper-scissors competition leads to stable spiral waves and under which circumstances they are influenced by nonlinear mobility.
Non-transitive dominance and the resulting cyclic loop of three or more competing species provide a fundamental mechanism to explain biodiversity in biological and ecological systems. Both Lotka-Volterra and May-Leonard type model approaches agree that heterogeneity of invasion rates within this loop does not hazard the coexistence of competing species. While the resulting abundances of species become heterogeneous, the species who has the smallest invasion power benefits the most from unequal invasions. Nevertheless, the effective invasion rate in a predator and prey interaction can also be modified by breaking the direction of dominance and allowing reversed invasion with a smaller probability. While this alteration has no particular consequence on the behavior within the framework of Lotka-Volterra models, the reactions of May-Leonard systems are highly different. In the latter case, not just the mentioned survival of the weakest effect vanishes, but also the coexistence of the loop cannot be maintained if the reversed invasion exceeds a threshold value. Interestingly, the extinction to a uniform state is characterized by a non-monotonous probability function. While the presence of reversed invasion does not fully diminish the evolutionary advantage of the original predator species, but this weakened effective invasion rate helps the related prey species to collect larger initial area for the final battle between them. The competition of these processes determines the likelihood in which uniform state the system terminates.
We consider a two-dimensional model of three species in rock-paper-scissors competition and study the self-organisation of the population into fascinating spiraling patterns. Within our individual-based metapopulation formulation, the population composition changes due to cyclic dominance (dominance-removal and dominance-replacement), mutations, and pair-exchange of neighboring individuals. Here, we study the influence of mobility on the emerging patterns and investigate when the pair-exchange rate is responsible for spiral waves to become elusive in stochastic lattice simulations. In particular, we show that the spiral waves predicted by the systems deterministic partial equations are found in lattice simulations only within a finite range of the mobility rate. We also report that in the absence of mutations and dominance-replacement, the resulting spiraling patterns are subject to convective instability and far-field breakup at low mobility rate. Possible applications of these resolution and far-field breakup phenomena are discussed.
We study the collective dynamics of colloidal suspensions in the presence of a time-dependent potential, by means of dynamical density functional theory. We consider a non-linear diffusion equation for the density and show that spatial patterns emerge from a sinusoidal external potential with a time-dependent wavelength. These patterns are characterized by a sinusoidal density with the average wavelength and a Bessel-function envelope with an induced wavelength that depends only on the amplitude of the temporal oscillations. As a generalization of this result, we propose a design strategy to obtain a family of spatial patterns using time-dependent potentials of practically arbitrary shape.
Many developmental processes in biology utilize Notch-Delta signaling to construct an ordered pattern of cellular differentiation. This signaling modality is based on nearest-neighbor contact, as opposed to the more familiar mechanism driven by the release of diffusible ligands. Here, exploiting this juxtacrine property, we present an exact treatment of the pattern formation problem via a system of nine coupled ordinary differential equations. The possible patterns that are realized for realistic parameters can be analyzed by considering a co-dimension 2 pitchfork bifurcation of this system. This analysis explains the observed prevalence of hexagonal patterns with high Delta at their center, as opposed to those with central high Notch levels. We show that outside this range of parameters, in particular for low cis-coupling, a novel kind of pattern is produced, where high Delta cells have high Notch as well. It also suggests that the biological system is only weakly first order, so that an additional mechanism is required to generate the observed defect-free patterns. We construct a simple strategy for producing such defect-free patterns.