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Full-Text Articles in Population Biology
Modeling Purple Sea Urchin And California Sheephead Populations In Southern California Kelp Forests, Olivia Rachel Williams
Modeling Purple Sea Urchin And California Sheephead Populations In Southern California Kelp Forests, Olivia Rachel Williams
Senior Projects Spring 2017
In this project I am modelling the predator-prey relationship between California sheephead and purple sea urchin populations, respectively, in kelp forests off the coast of southern California. The Lotka-Volterra equations explain predator-prey relationships in their most basic form. These equations incorporate a set of biological assumptions that can be unrepresentative of many ecological systems. I will consider alternate models that incorporate variations of the Lotka-Volterra model which may better represent the biology of the purple sea urchins and California sheephead. Using biological characteristics of both species in kelp forests, I will set possible and likely parameters and solve for unknown …