Growth, death, and resource competition in sessile organisms.

ABSTRACT: Population-level scaling in ecological systems arises from individual growth and death with competitive constraints. We build on a minimal dynamical model of metabolic growth where the tension between individual growth and mortality determines population size distribution. We then separately include resource competition based on shared capture area. By varying rates of growth, death, and competitive attrition, we connect regular and random spatial patterns across sessile organisms from forests to ants, termites, and fairy circles. Then, we consider transient temporal dynamics in the context of asymmetric competition, such as canopy shading or large colony dominance, whose effects primarily weaken the smaller of two competitors. When such competition couples slow timescales of growth to fas

SUBMITTER: Lee ED 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8053998 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature