The effect of environmental disturbances on the dynamics of marine intertidal populations (Q759687)

A model is proposed for studying the influence of the duration of a nonreproducing life stage on the dynamics of marine intertidal populations. Analysis of the model shows that this system, in which the time delay (the nonreproducing stage) is in a density independent term, has two solutions. When the nonzero solution exists it is a stable point. A randomly occurring environmental disturbance, to which only the nonreproducing stage is resistant, is superimposed on the basic deterministic equation. Average extinction time, estimated by simulation, appears as a nonmonotonic function of the duration of disturbance. The graph of extinction time has multiple extrema with minima occuring where the ratio between the duration of the resistant stage and the duration of disturbance is an integer.