Abstract
Thresholds for survival and extinction are important for assessing the risk of mortality in systems exposed to exogeneous stress. For generic, rudimentary population models and the classical resource-consumer models of Leslie and Gallopin, we demonstrate the existence of a survival threshold for situations where demographic parameters are fluctuating, generally, in a nonperiodic manner. The fluctuations are assumed, to be generated by exogenous, anthropogenic stresses such as toxic chemical exposures. In general, the survival threshold is determined by a relationship between mean stress measure in organisms to the ratio of the population intrinsic growth rate and stress response rate.
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Research supported by the fund of Chinese Natural Science.
Research supported in part by the U.S. Enviromental Protection Agency under cooperative agreement CR-813353-01-0.
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Zhien, M., Baojun, S. & Hallam, T.G. The threshold of survival for systems in a fluctuating environment. Bltn Mathcal Biology 51, 311–323 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02460110
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02460110