Stochastic population dynamics in turbulent fields

TL;DR

This paper presents theoretical models that incorporate turbulent advection and stochastic growth to better understand the complex, irregular spatiotemporal patterns observed in plankton populations, aligning more closely with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel modeling approach combining turbulence and stochasticity to improve the realism of population dynamics simulations.

Findings

Models show improved fit to experimental data.

Turbulence and stochastic growth significantly influence population distribution.

Enhanced understanding of patchy plankton distributions.

Abstract

The behavior of interacting populations typically displays irregular temporal and spatial patterns that are difficult to reconcile with an underlying deterministic dynamics. A classical example is the heterogeneous distribution of plankton communities, which has been observed to be patchy over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Here, we use plankton communities as prototype systems to present theoretical approaches for the analysis of the combined effects of turbulent advection and stochastic growth in the spatiotemporal dynamics of the population. Incorporation of these two factors into mathematical models brings an extra level of realism to the description and leads to better agreement with experimental data than that of previously proposed models based on reaction-diffusion equations.