This project considers the simulation of population dynamics in a spatially explicit manner.
The simulation space consists of a grid, where each cell is initialised with a continuous number sampled uniformly in the range of 0-1. These numbers represent the fitness of the organism on a particular cell, where 1 represents optimal reproductive success and 0 none at all. A number of cells are randomly initialised with an organism.
A fixed number of iterations is simulated. In each iteration, first, the reproductive potential of all organisms are calculated individually. In a second step, the dispersal of offspring around the parent is modelled. For this process, a key parameter is the dispersal decay, i.e. the exponent with which the density of (direct) offspring decreases with distance from its parent.
Aim of this project is to
- identify general differences in spatial vs non-spatial simulations
- investigate the effect of spatial structure on population dynamics and evolutionary strategy