Modelling aquatic communities: trophic interactions and the body mass-and-age structure of fish populations give rise to long-period variations in fish population size (Q2257409)

The authors suggest a mathematical model for an aquatic community which includes zooplankton, fish reproduction, and age-weight structured trophic relationships. The main purpose pursued when developing the mathematical model was to explore whether long-period oscillations in population size can be caused only by structural features of aquatic communities and trophic interactions between hydrobionts without any external influences. The model developed in the paper can be used to represent a community consisting of only few populations, such as zooplankton, planktivorous fish, and predatory fish whose dynamics is described by a system of difference equations. A complete analysis of such system is a rather difficult task. Therefore, the authors present results of the first stage of the investigation in the form of population trajectories of planktivorous and predatory fish in which the effects of temporal organization of reproduction process can be traced. In particular, it is shown that interactions between components of the aquatic community can result in long-period oscillations in the fish population size with the period that has the order of decades. Remarkably, predatory fish can be that component of the community which gives rise to such oscillations. Further analysis of the model leads to the conclusion that an increase in the zooplankton growth rate may entail a sequence of bifurcations affecting the dynamics of a fish population and leading from steady states to dynamic chaos via regular oscillations and quasicycles. In order to assess the effect of spatial heterogeneity of the ecosystems on the dynamics of a fish population, the authors adapt the model to simulate dynamical patterns resulting from biomass exchange between neighboring habitats. They demonstrate that the biomass exchange can lead to dramatic changes in fish population dynamics. In particular, the fish migration can destabilize both stationary states and chaotic regimes leading to regular and quasi-regular oscillations in the fish population size.