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We have decided to discontinue the publication of preprints on our preprint server as of 1 March 2024. The publication culture within mathematics has changed so much due to the rise of repositories such as ArXiV (www.arxiv.org) that we are encouraging all institute members to make their preprints available there. An institute's repository in its previous form is, therefore, unnecessary. The preprints published to date will remain available here, but we will not add any new preprints here.

MiS Preprint
25/2005

Distributed Delays Stabilize Ecological Feedback Systems

Christian Eurich, Andreas Thiel and Lorenz Fahse

Abstract

We consider the effect of distributed delays in predator-prey models and ecological food webs. Whereas the occurrence of delays in population dynamics is usually regarded a destabilizing factor leading to the extinction of species, we here demonstrate complementarily that delay distributions yield larger stability regimes than single delays. Food webs with distributed delays closely resemble non-delayed systems in terms of ecological stability measures. Thus, we state that dependence of dynamics on multiple instances in the past is an important, but so far underestimated factor for stability in dynamical systems.

Received:
Apr 5, 2005
Published:
Apr 5, 2005
PACS:
02.30.Ks, 87.10.+e, 87.23.Cc
Keywords:
biological feedback systems

Related publications

inJournal
2005 Repository Open Access
Christian W. Eurich, Andreas Thiel and Lorenz Fahse

Distributed delays stabilize ecological feedback systems

In: Physical review letters, 94 (2005) 15, p. 158104