A model to understand the dynamics of ecological networks in space and time

LEONARDO ARIEL SARAVIA

Bremerhaven

Workshop; IMCONet Spatial (and temporal) modeling of pelagic and benthic data Workshop; 2014

Alfred Wegener Institute

We represent food webs using graph theory. The nodes are trophic species and the edges are predator-prey links. Another way is to use the adjacency matrix representation. These are static representations that can be built using empirical observations and published research, these are assumed constant. As we know that food-webs vary in space and time, a regional food-web should be compiled. Species interactions should be viewed as a stochastic event that is influenced by biological traits and indirect interactions. A simple model to represent this kind of spatial variation in food webs is presented.