Predator-Prey Interactions

Coming soon…

Predator-prey interactions are one of the most important ways that species interact in ecological communities. Whenever an organism consumes another living organism, this interaction is termed ‘predation’. Because all non-photosynthetic (non-plant-like) species must eat for survival, consumption of food resources forms the basis of many other species interactions forming communities. Thus, people have developed mathematical models in order to understand how the population abundance of predators affects populations of their prey, and how these populations can fluctuate over time. In this lesson, we will discuss the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey interactions that was developed independently by Alfred Lotka and Vito Volterra in 1920. Students will interact with this simplified model, which examines populations of single predator and prey species, by changing parameters such as the initial population sizes of both the predator and prey as well as other environmental conditions. This exercise will illustrate these concepts using data and organisms from scientific papers that are local to coastal North Carolina.