Numerical Simulation on Ecological Interactions in Time and Space

The most formal and systematic tool to simplify a real-world phenomenon dealing with the interrelationships between organisms and their environment, including the interaction between each other is an ecological model. Of course, it is usually created for one or more purposes, for example, to gain system understanding, to forecast the future state of the system, and to develop new hypotheses. Not only that, a good model should also reach a balance between the complexities of the real-world system, which is too difficult to solve, and the need of simple formulation and valid analytic model, which can be explicitly solved. Ecological modeling has a long and rich history. So far many sophisticated ecological models have been developed in all fields of ecology such as the ecology of individuals including physiological ecology, the ecology of populations, and the study of ecosystems (classified by Hofbauer & Sigmund, 1988; Roughgarden, 1996). Ecological phenomenon can often be simplified by making some assumptions and studying it with suitable time scales and spatial interactions. It should be noted that a simple deterministic system could behave dramatically unlike when its time scale and its spatial interaction are changed. Therefore, the next coming sections aim to convince the significance of time scales and spatial interactions.