Reversals of chaos in biological control systems

✍ Scribed by J.L. González-Andújar; J.N. Perry

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 210 KB
• Volume: 175
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.1995.0169

✦ Synopsis

Cavalieri & Koc¸ak (1994) presented a non-spatial theoretical model of the dynamics of European corn borer (ECB) populations that included the effects of biological control agents. They showed that certain combinations of parameters could generate chaotic dynamics in the population.

Recently, others (McCallum, 1992; Gonza´lez-Andu´jar & Perry, 1993a, b; Stone, 1993; Hasting, 1993) have shown that the introduction of even a small amount of dispersion into chaotic populations shifts, in the majority of cases, the resulting system towards more predictable, simple dynamics, often of an oscillatory nature, suggesting that the occurrence of chaotic dynamics might be limited to more isolated populations (Tilman & Wedin, 1991). A similar effect may be observed in the models of Cavalieri and Koc¸ak. For instance, consider the effect on the population dynamics of amending their model [their eqn (1a)] to allow for the addition of a constant number, say I, of ECB immigrants.