Description
In ecology, predator and prey species share a common interest in survival. However, this common interest places these species at odds with each other. Predators need to consume prey for their survival. Prey, on the other hand, do not survive if they are consumed. To meet their needs, predators engage in foraging or prey-taxis behaviors whereby they seek areas of high prey density. For prey there are numerous defense strategies to engage including aposematic mechanisms to advertise they are not worth the predator’s while, attacking the predator through chemical or community defense mechanisms, and alarm calls to seek assistance from predators at` higher trophic levels of the food chain; to name a few. In this talk, we will focus on competition between prey-taxis and chemical defense; placing a particular emphasis on conditions leading to spatial segregation between predator and prey, or as it is known in mathematics, pattern formation. We will also discuss other prey defense mechanisms such as the burglar alarm hypothesis and the potential impact of prey defense mechanisms on prey species in resource competition.
Date of Event
March 24, 2022
Location
Parker Room 338
How Prey Defense Patterns Predator-Prey Distributions
Parker Room 338
In ecology, predator and prey species share a common interest in survival. However, this common interest places these species at odds with each other. Predators need to consume prey for their survival. Prey, on the other hand, do not survive if they are consumed. To meet their needs, predators engage in foraging or prey-taxis behaviors whereby they seek areas of high prey density. For prey there are numerous defense strategies to engage including aposematic mechanisms to advertise they are not worth the predator’s while, attacking the predator through chemical or community defense mechanisms, and alarm calls to seek assistance from predators at` higher trophic levels of the food chain; to name a few. In this talk, we will focus on competition between prey-taxis and chemical defense; placing a particular emphasis on conditions leading to spatial segregation between predator and prey, or as it is known in mathematics, pattern formation. We will also discuss other prey defense mechanisms such as the burglar alarm hypothesis and the potential impact of prey defense mechanisms on prey species in resource competition.
Presenter Bio
Dr. Evan Haskell serves a professor of mathematics at NSU Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in 2000. Dr. Haskell joined the faculty at NSU in 2005 and has served as mentor and professor to hundreds of NSU students. He works on applied problems inspired by the real and engineered world.