Abstract
Many species live in colonies that prosper for a while and then collapse. After the collapse the colony survivors disperse randomly and found new colonies that may or may not make it depending on the new environment they find. We use birth and death chains in random environments to model such a population and to argue that random dispersion is a superior strategy for survival.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Haccou, P., Iwasa, Y.: Establishment probabilities in fluctuating environments: a branching model. Theor. Popul. Biol. 50, 254–280 (1996)
Haccou, P., Vatutin, V.: Establishment success and extinction in autocorrelated environment. Theor. Popul. Biol. 64, 303–314 (2003)
Holldobler, B., Wilson, E.O.: The Ants. Belknap Press, Cambridge (1990)
Karlin, S., Taylor, H.M.: A First Course in Stochastic Processes, 2nd edn. Academic Press, New York (1975)
Schinazi, R.B.: Classical and Spatial Stochastic Processes, 2nd edn. Birkhauser, Zurich (2014)
Smith, W.L., Wilkinson, W.E.: On branching processes in random environments. Ann. Math. Stat. 40, 814–827 (1969)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schinazi, R.B. Does Random Dispersion Help Survival?. J Stat Phys 159, 101–107 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-014-1173-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-014-1173-x