Ecosystem engineering: the effect of the synergy between cooperators

• Grant number: 15/06173-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2015
• End date: November 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: José Fernando Fontanari
• Grantee: Caroline Franco
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Organisms interact with their environment and some, called ecosystem engineers, are capable of modifying their habitats to optimize their chances of survival and reproduction. Since these changes may last for several generations, the ecosystem engineering or niche construction may impact significantly the evolutionary process. In this research project, we use a model introduced by Gurney & Lawton (1996) to study how different forms of cooperation in the habitat transforming process (positive and negative synergy) influences the population dynamics of ecosystem engineers. The key element in this dynamics is that the number of habitats, which can exist in three distinct forms or states - virgin, usable and degraded, is a dynamical quantity that influences and is influenced by the population of ecosystem engineers in a given moment. In particular, the change of a virgin habitat into an usable one involves some sort of cooperative work among the organisms. The original model assumes that the efficiency of this transformation scales linearly with the population size and our goal is to study the cases in which the efficiency scales sub-linearly (negative synergy) and super-linearly (positive synergy) with the population size.