Evolutionary Dynamics of a Food Web with Recursive Branching and Extinction

摘要

A dynamic systems approach to evolutionary branching and its development in an artificial food web is presented. Predator-prey interaction among trophic species with two traits generates a variety of evolutionary branching patterns, depending on interaction strengths and mutation rates. Studying branching patterns in a phenotypic space reveals three branching patterns: prey-bifurcation, predator-bifurcation, and net-bifurcation. In particular, a complex food web network emerges through net-bifurcation. A relationship between biomass and the number of species is analysed by changing the interaction strength. We report that the branching and extinction rates of trophic species reaches a maximum when the number of species, but not the entire biomass, reaches a maximum.