Dynamical Mechanism for Coexistence of Dispersing Species

✍ Scribed by MARY ANN HARRISON; YING-CHENG LAI; ROBERT D. HOLT

• Book ID: 102975899
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 600 KB
• Volume: 213
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2001.2404

✦ Synopsis

Dispersal of organisms may play an essential role in the coexistence of species. Recent studies of the evolution of dispersal in temporally varying environments suggest that clones di!ering in dispersal rates can coexist inde"nitely. In this work, we explore the mechanism permitting such coexistence for a model of dispersal in a patchy environment, where temporal heterogeneity arises from endogenous chaotic dynamics. We show that coexistence arises from an extreme type of intermittent behavior, namely the phenomenon known as on}o! intermittency. In e!ect, coexistence arises because of an alternation between synchronized and de-synchronized dynamical behaviors. Our analysis of the dynamical mechanism for on}o! intermittency lends strong credence to the proposition that chaotic synchronism may be a general feature of species coexistence, where competing species di!er only in dispersal rate.