Modelagem de ecossistemas com competição por recursos em relevos fragmentados

Abstract

Many factors may influence the development and perpetuation of an ecosystem, among them we can mention how the allocation of resources in made and the spatial heterogeneity . With a better understanding of patterns such as species-area relationship and distribution of abundance in a model where species interact in environments with spatial structure, we can get a deeper understanding of the processes occurring in an ecosystem. In this work, our main objective was to study the effect of fragmentation on these habitats and its influence on the patterns outlined above. In the model species interact in a two-dimensional lattice. The distribution of species is taken at random on the lattice sites. After the selection of a given site, we identify the four nearest neighbors, in order that the population of this site reproduces and occupies a place not inhabited with certain probability, that will depend on the distribution of resources in that area and how species use these resources. When we extend this model for fragmented habitats, a proportion of 5%, 15%, 25% and 35% of the sites were established as unavailable for the occupation of the species. The results show that the species-area relationship presents a power-law regime for small areas and another for large areas, and that for small and intermediate heterogeneities the powerlaw exponent grows, decreasing to very high heterogeneities. We also observed that the exponent for large areas is always bigger than the are for small areas and that the slope of the line grows as the area is more fragmented. We also observed a unimodal relationship between diversity and heterogeneity, result in agreement with those found in the literature.