Technical Papers and Presentations

Continuous dynamic models, e.g. COMSOL based simulations, play – besides statistical or iterative methods – a mayor role in theoretical ecology; in forecasting and management, but also in systems analysis. Ecological issues generally comprise highly interacting agents and/or unknown side effects. Here we show how combining direct simulation with COMSOL with simple optimization tools in Matlab helps research in ecology. We analyze the dynamics of a physiologically structured population under changing temperature and food conditions in two ways. At first we conduct virtual experiments aiming at efficient experimental design for parameter identification, afterwards we accomplish simulations for process analysis in real life experiments for the freshwater shrimp Gammarus pulex.