Numerical simulations of multicomponent ecological models with adaptive methods

BACKGROUND: The study of dynamic relationship between a multi-species models has gained a huge amount of scientific interest over the years and will continue to maintain its dominance in both ecology and mathematical ecology in the years to come due to its practical relevance and universal existence. Some of its emergence phenomena include spatiotemporal patterns, oscillating solutions, multiple steady states and spatial pattern formation. METHODS: Many time-dependent partial differential equations are found combining low-order nonlinear with higher-order linear terms. In attempt to obtain a reliable results of such problems, it is desirable to use higher-order methods in both space and time. Most computations heretofore are restricted to second order in time due to some difficulties introduced by the combination of stiffness and nonlinearity. Hence, the dynamics of a reaction-diffusion models considered in this paper permit the use of two classic mathematical ideas. As a result, we introduce higher order finite difference approximation for the spatial discretization, and advance the resulting system of ODE with a family of exponential time differencing schemes. We present the stability properties of these methods along with the extensive numerical simulations for a number of multi-species models. RESULTS: When the diffusivity is small many of the models considered in this paper are found to exhibit a form of localized spatiotemporal patterns. Such patterns are correctly captured in the local analysis of the model equations. An extended 2D results that are in agreement with Turing typical patterns such as stripes and spots, as well as irregular snakelike structures are presented. We finally show that the designed schemes are dynamically consistent. CONCLUSION: The dynamic complexities of some ecological models are studied by considering their linear stability analysis. Based on the choices of parameters in transforming the system into a dimensionless form, we were able to obtain a well-balanced system that is biologically meaningful. The accuracy and reliability of the schemes are justified via the computational results presented for each of the diffusive multi-species models.