Subsurface Combat in a Test Tube:Building upon the Work of G.F. Gause

摘要

Aimed at force-on-force modelers, this paper revisits a landmark of quantitative research in the field of ecology: G.E Gause's application of a pair of equations, similar to those of Lanchester, to test tube conflicts between species of microbes. Although Gause's equations tracked his experiments' average results, individual outcomes varied widely, displaying no central tendency and even some bimodality. Brian McCue's re-analysis replaces Gause's Lanchester-like differential equations with a discrete-event stochastic model whose distributions better match Gause's data. McCue sees this as empirical confirmation-difficult or impossible to obtain from history's one-of-a-kind battles-of the importance of stochastic effects that differential equation attrition models do not include.