next up previous contents
Next: Individual based Chemokinetic Models Up: Ecology and Chemokinetics Previous: Metabolism

Ecosystems and Food Webs

 

Ecosystems and food webs can be described using a compartment model. In principle, each compartment represents one species or one type of species. Species which feed on each other are connected by an interchange flow modeling their predating pattern, as described in the last section.

Of course, the more detailed the ecosystem description is, the more detailed and more realistic the compartment model will be. For example, it is possible to divide a species into several distinct classes, each living spatially separated or equipped with distinctive anatomic features. Each of these classes would then be represented by a separate compartment.

To give the reader some inkling of what can be achieved with this kind of model, we describe some simple examples from the literature for ecosystems or parts of ecosystems modeled as compartment models.


  ex424


 ex435


ex446


ex450


next up previous contents
Next: Individual based Chemokinetic Models Up: Ecology and Chemokinetics Previous: Metabolism

Joerg Fliege
Wed Dec 22 12:25:31 CET 1999