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Modeling Two Species Interactions Educational Module

Author(s): Chris Wojan1, George Furey2, Clarence Lehman1, Daniel Stanton1, Allison Shaw1

1. University of Minnesota 2. Norwegian University of Life Sciences

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Summary:
This set of files comprises an educational module for use in college-level ecology courses. It focuses on exploring two species interactions (mutualism, competition, and predator-prey dynamics) from a purely theoretical/modeling approach. We use the…

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This set of files comprises an educational module for use in college-level ecology courses. It focuses on exploring two species interactions (mutualism, competition, and predator-prey dynamics) from a purely theoretical/modeling approach. We use the "r s N" equations for population dynamics developed by Clarence Lehman, which are analogous to the more traditional Lotka-Volterra models. It is composed of an R Shiny app, a readme for the app, a worksheet for students, and notes for instructors.

Licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 06 Sep 2024 doi:10.25334/7WDP-ZW19 - cite this

Keywords

  1. ecology
  2. species interactions
  3. mathematical modeling

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Contents:
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Description

Guide to the files:

"TwoSpeciesInteractions.R" - This is the R Shiny application that allows users to input parameters (intrinsic growth rates, intra- and interspecific density dependence coefficients) and observe the outcomes of different types of two species interactions. It can be shared with students to be opened locally on their computers via RStudio, or hosted on an RShiny server if you have one available.

"Two Species Interactions Worksheet" - This is the document that can be supplied to the students. It includes a series of instructions and questions to guide them through using the app to explore population dynamics in the context of mutualism, competition, and exploitation.

"Instructor Notes" - This document features some notes on how to deploy the assignment, as well as notes on the development history.

"Shiny App Readme" - This document describes the components of the R code of the Shiny App. It was initially generated by ChatGPT given the R script as a prompt, but was checked for accuracy and modified for clarity.

 

Also included is a link to the textbook "Quantitative Ecology: A New Unified Approach" by Clarence Lehman, Shelby Loberg, and Adam Clark. It presents the formulation of the "r s N" modeling equations, which may be unfamiliar to some readers.

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