A Microfoundation of Predator-Prey Dynamics

Predator-prey relationships account for an important part of all interactions between species. In this paper we provide a microfoundation for such predator-prey relations in a food chain. Basic entities of our analysis are representative organisms of species modelled similar to economic households. With prices as indicators of scarcity, organisms are assumed to behave as if they maximize their net biomass subject to constraints which express the organisms' risk of being preyed upon during predation. Like consumers, organisms face a 'budget constraint' requiring their expenditure on prey biomass not to exceed their revenue from supplying own biomass. Short-run ecosystem equilibria are defined and derived. The net biomass acquired by the representative organism in the short term determines the positive or negative population growth. Moving short-run equilibria constitute the dynamics of the predator-prey relations that are characterized in numerical analysis. The population dynamics derived here turn out to differ significantly from those assumed in the standard Lotka-Volterra model.

[1]  J. Tschirhart.  A new adaptive system approach to predator–prey modeling , 2004 .

[2]  J. Tschirhart,et al.  Resource competition among plants: from maximizing individuals to community structure , 2002 .

[3]  J. Tschirhart,et al.  Ecological Transfers in Non-Human Communities Parallel Economic Markets in a General Equilibrium Ecosystem Model , 2003 .

[4]  Yang Kuang,et al.  Global qualitative analysis of a ratio-dependent predator–prey system , 1998 .

[5]  T. Schoener.  Mechanistic Approaches to Community Ecology: A New Reductionism , 1986 .

[6]  Agriculture, Pesticides and the Ecosystem , 2004 .

[7]  S. L. Lima,et al.  Behavioral decisions made under the risk of predation: a review and prospectus , 1990 .

[8]  T. Eichner,et al.  A MICRO‐LEVEL ‘CONSUMER APPROACH’ TO SPECIES POPULATION DYNAMICS , 2005, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[9]  R. Freckleton,et al.  On detecting and measuring competition in spatially structured plant communities , 2000 .

[10]  J. Tschirhart,et al.  Microfoundations of Population Dynamics , 2001 .

[11]  THE IMPACT OF SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE IN FOOD CHAINS ON SPECIES POPULATION DYNAMICS , 2003 .

[12]  Harvesting in an Eight Species Ecosystem , 2003 .

[13]  B. Hannon.  Marginal product pricing in the ecosystem. , 1976, Journal of theoretical biology.

[14]  J Tschirhart,et al.  General equilibrium of an ecosystem. , 2000, Journal of theoretical biology.

[15]  J. Hirshleifer.  Economics from a Biological Viewpoint , 1977, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[16]  D. Finnoff,et al.  Protecting an Endangered Species While Harvesting Its Prey in a General Equilibrium Ecosystem Model , 2003, Land Economics.

[17]  V. Grimm.  Ten years of individual-based modelling in ecology: what have we learned and what could we learn in the future? , 1999 .

[18]  Peter A. Abrams,et al.  Predators that Benefit Prey and Prey that Harm Predators: Unusual Effects of Interacting Foraging Adaptation , 1992, The American Naturalist.

[19]  G. Rosen.  Characterizing conditions for generalized Verhulst logistic growth of a biological population , 1984 .

[20]  L. Persson,et al.  ADAPTIVE HABITAT USE IN SIZE-STRUCTURED POPULATIONS: LINKING INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR TO POPULATION PROCESSES , 2003 .

[21]  J. Tschirhart,et al.  Ecosystems, externalities, and economies , 1992, Environmental and Resource Economics.

[22]  Chris Cosner,et al.  On the Dynamics of Predator–Prey Models with the Beddington–DeAngelis Functional Response☆ , 2001 .