Noise in ecosystems: a short review (Q1774435)

The paper presents a survey of noise-induced effects in ecosystems. The nonlinearity of the interaction between the components of the system renders the dynamical equations very sensitive to initial conditions, to deterministic external perturbations and to environmental noise. This interplay can give rise to phenomena like stochastic resonance, noise-delayed extinction, temporal oscillations and spatial pattern formation. The present work exemplifies these aspects by treating three different ecosystems: two competing species, three interacting species (one predator and two preys, with a periodical interaction parameter accounting for temperature changes) and, finally, a large number of interacting species. In the first and last case the interaction parameter is taken as random. The transient dynamics of these systems are described by generalized Lotka-Volterra equations in the presence of multiplicative Gaussian white noise, which models the impact of the environment. The results of the study comprise: (a) noise-induced pattern formation in the coexistence regime, with non-monotonic behaviors of pattern areas and of the density correlation versus the intensity of the multiplicative noise; (b) quasi-deterministic oscillations; (c) stochastic resonance; (d) noise-delayed extinction. In the case of an ecosystem composed of a great number of interacting species, the asymptotic behavior of the time average of the i-th population is obtained analytically. The authors investigate the role of the noise on the asymptotic probability distribution of the populations, on the stability-instability transition, and on the nonlinear relaxation. The model is proposed as a useful description of plankton dynamics.