Non-linear growth mechanics—I. Volterra-hamilton systems

✍ Scribed by P.L. Antonelli; B.H. Voorhees

• Book ID: 104272483
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 590 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1522-9602
• DOI: 10.1016/s0092-8240(83)80044-5

✦ Synopsis

In this, the first of a series of papers on stochastic and deterministic non-linear allometric growth models, a deterministic model is proposed which generalizes the widely applicable classical linear model of Huxley and Needham. There are n types of producers, each type depositing a product which accumulates monotonically in the environment. Producers interact via a mass action law satisfying an optimality condition. Coefficients may be interpreted as competition between the various producer types in the usual Volterra sense. An ideal coral reef is studied in which the n species of coral polyps lay down aragonite calcium carbonate in building the reef framework. This deterministic model predicts that younger reefs are strongly unstable relative to initial species abundance, while older reefs grow in the classical sense of Huxley and Needham, asymptotically, as time goes to infinity.