Wiki site of the practical exercise of the V Southern-Summer School on Mathematical Biology.

Here you will find the exercise assignment and the group's products.

If you are a group member login to edit this page, create new pages from it, and upload files.

Intraguild predation is a very widespread and important interaction in many systems. It happens when two or more species that make use of similar resources (that is, a guild), making them competitors, also prey on each other. In the Coachella Valley, California intraguild predation occurs among four scorpion species. Polis & McCormick (1987) carried out a study on these species, and concluded that the most abudant scorpion species limited the growth of the others not through competition, but rather because of predation.

Hadrurus arizonensis scorpion

Propose a mathematical model for the dynamics of these populations of scorpions. Your model should take into account the findings and hypotheses of Polis & McCormick (1987). Use this model to explore the consequences of this dynamics and advance hypotheses that can be tested in the field or in the laboratory.

• Can the predator-prey interaction, rather than competition, be the decisive factor for which species is most abundant?
• How does the relevance of the age structure to the intraguild predation interaction affect the system? What about symmetry?

• Polis & McCormick (1987) Intraguild Predation and Competition Among Desert Scorpions Ecology 68(2), pp. 332-343 link