Majid Bani-Yaghoub, Ph.D.

 

 

Social Network Analysis of Rodents

Measuring long term changes in the social networks of interacting species can reveal vital information about the ecology and evolution of wildlife communities. Although social network analysis is a promising tool to study the structure and dynamics of wildlife communities, the current methods require costly and detailed network data, which often are not available over long time periods (e.g. decades). The present work aims to resolve this issue by developing a new methodology that requires much less detailed data and relies on well-known mathematical Lotka-Volterra (LV) models to quantify the long term changes in the population interactions (e.g. long-term temporal changes from cooperative behavior to competitive behavior).

 

To examine the robustness of this new method, the annual LV models will be selected and specified using the available long-term abundance data (1973- 2003) of Kansas rodents. If successful, the developed methodology can elucidate the presence, quantify the magnitudes, and detect the variability of interactions within and among the rodent species. We also are aware of many other long-term data of the same nature that can be used to analyze the ecology and evolution of population interactions among species other than rodents. Combining the theory and the available data, our long-term goals are (1) to extend the methodology to measure the spatio-temporal changes in the social networks of species residing in the same geographical environment; and (2) to develop a framework to study the possible impacts of climate change on population interactions.

 

 

In the Reaction-Diffusion LV, let y_i (x, y, t)   denote the proportional density of species i at location (x, y) and time t. Specifically, for i =1, ..., 5 y_i (x, y, t)  denotes the proportional density of Cotton Rat (Sigmodon hispidus), Prairie Vole (Microtus ochrogaster), White-footed Mouse (Peromyscus lecuopus), Deer Mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus), and Western Harvest Mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis), respectively.

 

The following animations represent the the numerical simulations of the Reaction-Diffusion LV model for the years 1976-1979. Using the estimated annual parameter values it can bee seen that the solutions converge to constant equilibrium (y₁, y₂, y₃, y₄, y₅) = (0.415, 0, 0, 0, 0.485 ) around day 1780 (April, 1978) and constant equilibrium (y₁, y₂, y₃, y₄, y₅) = (1, 0, 0, 0, 0 ) around day 2330 (October, 1979).

 

 

Spatio-temporal dynamics of Cotton Rat



 

 

 

 

§  Collaborator: Dr. Aaron W. Reed reedaw@umkc.edu, UMKC School of Biological Sciences

§  Funding: UMRB, 2015-2016