From Individual Behavior to Population Dynamics in Spatially Explicit Ecological Models

• Grant number: 24/18255-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics
• Principal Investigator: Nathan Jacob Berkovits
• Grantee: Rafael Menezes dos Santos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/14335-0 - ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research: a regional center for Theoretical Physics, AP.ESP

Abstract

Understanding how organism behavior drives population dynamics and originates ecological patterns at larger scales is a fundamental challenge in theoretical ecology and complex systems. In particular, existing approaches rarely incorporate realistic movement of organisms. Recent developments by Martinez-Garcia et al. (2020) show a promising avenue for bridging this gap by investigating encounter rates for organisms with range-resident behavior. This approach has been successfully extrapolated to entire populations with the range-resident logistic model (Menezes et al., in prep.), suggesting new methods and metrics to upscale organism-level information to demographic rates (Menezes et al, in prep.).In this project, I will expand previous results by focusing on the development and application of tools based on statistical mechanics and stochastic processes to describe interactions between multiple species in a community. Using agent-based simulations, spatial moment dynamics, and point processes, I will combine theory and data to extrapolate previous results to interspecific interactions and complex ecological communities. By integrating concepts from movement ecology, complex systems theory, and statistical physics, I aim to create advanced models that capture the emergent properties of ecological systems across multiple scales.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

SURENDRAN, ANUDEEP; PINTO-RAMOS, DAVID; MENEZES, RAFAEL; MARTINEZ-GARCIA, RICARDO. Spatial moment dynamics and biomass density equations provide complementary, yet limited, descriptions of pattern formation in individual-based simulations. PHYSICA D-NONLINEAR PHENOMENA, v. 477, p. 11-pg., 2025-07-01. (24/18255-0, 21/14335-0)