Journal
THEORETICAL POPULATION BIOLOGY
Volume 77, Issue 4, Pages 243-249Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2010.03.004
Keywords
Transient dynamics; Reactivity; Interaction strength; Species richness; Food web
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Although perturbations from a stable equilibrium must ultimately vanish, they can grow initially, and the maximum initial growth rate is called reactivity. Reactivity thus identifies systems that may undergo transient population surges or drops in response to perturbations; however, we lack biological and mathematical intuition about what makes a system reactive. This paper presents upper and lower bounds on reactivity for an arbitrary linearized model, explores their strictness, and discusses their biological implications. I find that less stable systems (i.e. systems with long transients) have a smaller possible range of reactivities for which no perturbations grow. Systems with more species have a higher capacity to be reactive, assuming species interactions do not weaken too rapidly as the number of species increases. Finally, I find that in discrete time, reactivity is determined largely by mean interaction strength and neither discrete nor continuous time reactivity are sensitive to food web topology. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available