| Abstract: |
| Emigration is an important ecological process that can substantially affect persistence, coexistence, and spatial population dynamics. In many systems, emigration is influenced by intraspecific density, while the role of interspecific competitor density remains less clear. Motivated by a 12-generation microcosm experiment involving two competing Tribolium species, we develop a reaction-diffusion Lotka-Volterra framework for studying density-dependent emigration between habitat patches. The model incorporates patch size, permeability, and density effects on the proportion emigrating from a patch and is parameterized using independent experimental data. To account for uncertainty and biological variability, we consider distributions of parameter values and use these to obtain probabilistic predictions of long-term steady-state behavior. This talk focuses on the experimental setting, the mathematical formulation of the model, parameterization, and the computational framework used to connect the model to observed microcosm dynamics. |
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