An individual-based model for clonal plant dynamics1

We propose an IBM for clonal plant dynamics, focusing on the effects of the network structure of the plants on the reproductive strategy of ramets. After some numerical tests we propose a large population approximation as an advection-diffusion PDE for population densities. 1 The model Individual-based models are in constant development in computational ecology. These models aim to represent the dynamics of populations, they explicitly describe each individual as well as each mechanism acting on these individuals. Here we consider a model for a clonal plant: At time t it is represented as a set of nodes (ramets) that may be connected by links (rhizomes or stolons), see Figure 1. The state of the nodes is described by: νt = ∑Nt i=1 δxit , x i t ∈ D def = [x (1) min, x (1) max]× [x (2) min, x (2) max] This work received support by the French national research agency (ANR) within the SYSCOMM project ANR-08-SYSC-012.