Ecological Modelling with the Calculus of Wrapped Compartments

TL;DR

This paper adapts the Calculus of Wrapped Compartments, a biological interaction modelling framework, to ecological systems, demonstrating its use through a case study on plant height distribution under climate change.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the calculus for ecological modelling and provides guidelines for encoding ecosystem interactions.

Findings

Model of Croton wagneri height distribution across altitude gradients

Insights into plant adaptation to climate change

Demonstration of the calculus's applicability to ecology

Abstract

The Calculus of Wrapped Compartments is a framework based on stochastic multiset rewriting in a compartmentalised setting originally developed for the modelling and analysis of biological interactions. In this paper, we propose to use this calculus for the description of ecological systems and we provide the modelling guidelines to encode within the calculus some of the main interactions leading ecosystems evolution. As a case study, we model the distribution of height of Croton wagneri, a shrub constituting the endemic predominant species of the dry ecosystem in southern Ecuador. In particular, we consider the plant at different altitude gradients (i.e. at different temperature conditions), to study how it adapts under the effects of global climate change.