This goal of this research proposal is to develop simulation models to understand and predict the behavior of organisms interacting within a complex environment. Currently,this group isdeveloping crowd-control models to simulate the collective behavior of pedestrians in the street or of people finding their way inside a building or a room. We propose to generalize crowd-control models, which are useful for understanding and predicting human behavior, to simulate behavior of other mobile animals. For example, models can be developed to predict the movement of animals through an ecopassage, the outcome of complex interactions along environmental gradients, and the effects of point-source pollution on larval settlement in marine communities.

This proposal is to expand the pedestrian motion model by Helbing-Moln´ar-Farkas-Vicsek (HMFV 2000) to investigate two specific biological problems: 1) niche partitioning of salamanders along an environmental gradient, and 2) settling behaviors of coral larvae on eutrophic and more pristine patch reefs.Our proximate goal is to develop a simulation framework useful for predicting patterns of salamander niche partitioning and coral recruitment, two model systems that differ greatly in ecosystem dynamics. Once these simulations are developed and validated, the methods for adapting and verifying them for diverse biological applications is straightforward. Our ultimate goal is to produce a web-based platform that biologists can use to simulate the behavior of organisms within their own unique system, both to serve as null models and to generate testable hypotheses for empirical research.

References

Helbing, D., I. Farkas, and T. Vicsek (2000) "Simulating dynamical features of escape panic", Nature : 487-490.