Zooplankton Mortality and the Dynamical Behaviour of Plankton population models

摘要

We investigate the dynamical behaviour of a simple plankton population model, which explicitly simulates the concentrations of nutrient, phytoplankton and zoo- plankton in the oceanic mixed layer. The model consists of three coupled ordinary differential equations. We use analytical and numerical techniques, focusing on the existence and nature of steady states and unforced oscillations (limit cycles) of the system. The oscillations arise from Hopf bifurcations, which are traced as each parameter in the model is varied across a realistic range.