| Abstract: |
| All organisms are composed of multiple chemical elements such as nitrogen (N),
phosphorus (P), and carbon (C). P is essential to build nucleic acids (DNA and RNA)
and N is needed for protein production. To keep track of the mismatch between P
requirement in the consumer and the P content in the producer, stoichiometric models
have been constructed to explicitly incorporate food quality and quantity. Most
stoichiometric models have suggested that the consumer dynamics heavily depend on P
content in the producer when the producer has low nutrient content (low P:C ratio).
Motivated by recent lab experiments, researchers explored the effect of excess producer
nutrient content (extremely high P:C ratio) on the grazer dynamics. This phenomenon is
called the stoichiometric knife edge. However, the global analysis of these resource
quality based models is challenging because the phase plane/space is separated into
many regions in which the governing nonlinear equations are different. The aim of
this talk is to present an overview of the rich and novel dynamics embodied in these
stoichiometric population models and its many biological implications and present
an alternative framework to build mathematically more tractable and biologically
more plausible models. |
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