Personality-Driven Consumer-Resource Dynamics

ShohelAhmed

University of Alberta

"Personality-Driven Consumer-Resource Dynamics"

To comprehend the mechanisms driving biodiversity and ecosystem resilience in a rapidly changing world, it is essential to explore the behavioral diversity among individuals in greater depth. Consistent individual differences in behavior, often referred to as animal personality, play a crucial role in shaping ecological and evolutionary dynamics, particularly in foraging behavior. Traditional approaches in behavioral and evolutionary ecology typically focus on average behavior, neglecting the significance of individual variability. This study explores the influence of consumer personality on ecological dynamics, specifically examining how variations in food availability affect behavioral strategies and ecosystem functioning. We develop a resource-consumer model that incorporates personality-dependent saturating attack rates based on the mean-field ratio of resources to consumers. The well-posedness of the model is established, and we analyze the existence and stability of all steady-state solutions. Through bifurcation analysis, we identify critical transition parameters and describe the nonlinear phenomena induced by personality-dependent attack rates. Our findings demonstrate that boldness in consumers enhances their persistence, particularly under low levels of boldness, where populations can survive even with moderate or high food supply, which was not captured in classical frameworks.
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