Reciprocal phenotypic plasticity can stabilize a predator-prey system

Akihiko Mougi
(Kyushu University)

08/5/8, 13:30 at Room 3631 (6th floor of building 3 of the Faculty of Sciences)


Predator-prey interaction is a core piece of natural communities. Understanding how the predator-prey interactions are maintained can be useful to grasp the nature of communities. Theoretically and empirically, it is well known that phenotypic plasticity can stabilize predator-prey interactions. Inducible defense has attracted attention in this context. In other words, inducible offense in predator, which has also been reported, has been ignored. In this study, I investigate how inducible defense and offense influence the stability in a predator-prey system and demonstrate that the system with both phenotypic changes can have the highest stability. Furthermore the results show that the system is highly stable when the inducible defense is beneficial but inducible offense does not neutralize it. I propose that reciprocal phenotypic plasticity can stabilize the predator-prey systems under defense beneficial condition.


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