Apart from the current human-induced climate change, the Holocene is notable for its stable climate. In contrast, the preceding age, the Pleistocene, was a time of intensive climatic fluctuations, with temperature changes of up to 15 degrees C occurring within a few decades. These climatic changes have substantially influenced both animal and plant populations. Until recently, the prevailing op...

Population densities of nematodes in field soil without plants were monitored for 10 months following application of organic amendments to pots in a greenhouse. The four treatments consisted of three different kinds of organic amendments: homogeneous crop residues of maize (Zea mays, C:N = 48.0:1), Texas panicum (Panicum texanum, C:N = 32.9:1), or velvetbean (Mucuna pruriens, C:N = 18.6:1), plu...

The phenomenon of spatial clustering induced by death and reproduction in a population of anomalously diffusing individuals is studied analytically. The possibility of social behaviors affecting the migration strategies has been taken into exam, in the case that anomalous diffusion is produced by means of a continuous time random walk (CTRW). In the case of independently diffusing individuals, ...

This paper proposes a system for predicting increases in virtual world user actions. The virtual world user population is a very important aspect of these worlds; however, methods for predicting fluctuations in these populations have not been well documented. Therefore, we attempt to predict changes in virtual world user populations with deep learning, using easily accessible online data, inclu...

The number of stem cells in a colonic crypt is often very small, which leads to large intrinsic fluctuations in the cell population. Based on the model of cell population dynamics with linear feedback in a colonic crypt, we present a stochastic dynamics of the cell population [including stem cells (SCs), transit amplifying cells (TACs), and fully differentiated cells (FDCs)]. The Fano factor, c...

Effective antibiotic use that minimizes treatment failures remains a challenge. A better understanding of how bacterial populations respond to antibiotics is necessary. Previous studies of large bacterial populations established the deterministic framework of pharmacodynamics. Here, characterizing the dynamics of population extinction, we demonstrated the stochastic nature of eradicating bacter...

We study the dynamics of phenotypically structured populations in environments with fluctuations. In particular, using novel arguments from the theories of Hamilton-Jacobi equations with constraints and homogenization, we obtain results about the evolution of populations in environments with time oscillations, the development of concentrations in the form of Dirac masses, the location of the do...

Understanding the drivers of population fluctuations is a central goal of ecology. Although well-established theory suggests that parasites can drive cyclic population fluctuations in their hosts, field evidence is lacking. Theory predicts that a parasite that loosely aggregates in the host population and has stronger impact on host fecundity than survival should induce cycling. The helminth Tr...

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain cyclic fluctuations in abundance of some small mammal populations. These hypotheses have been controversial, however, and there is no consensus among biologists as to why population cycles occur. In a demographically based model, we tested the potential influence of phase-specific changes in life history traits (age at maturity, fertility, juveni...

The abundance of a species' population in an ecosystem is rarely stationary, often exhibiting large fluctuations over time. Using historical data on marine species, we show that the year-to-year fluctuations of population growth rate obey a well-defined double-exponential (Laplace) distribution. This striking regularity allows us to devise a stochastic model despite seemingly irregular variatio...