Models with non-constant rates

Chapter 9 asks what happens when a rate is allowed to move. Every model carried to a result in the earlier chapters holds its rates fixed, which is the first thing an ecologist would question. The models here are sorted by what moves the rate: room that is used up and never returned, a critical point dragged along after the leading population, and a potential that is consumed and restocked.

The chapter comes from a different appetite from the rest of the thesis: questions of evolution rather than infection, such as punctuated equilibria and why large groups of species seem to diversify fastest early on.

Read chapter 9 in the thesis PDF (pp. 217–245) →