The Interaction between Predator Strategy and Prey Competition in a pair of Multi-Predator Multi-Prey Lattices

A computational study of a system of ten prey phenotypes and either one or ten predator phenotypes with a range offoraging behaviours, arranged on two separate one-dimensional lattices, is presented. Mutation between nearest neighboursalong the prey lattice occurs at a constant rate, and mutation may or may not be enabled for the predators. The signi canceof competition amongst the prey is investigated by testing a variety of distributions of the relative intraspeci c andinterspeci c competition. We also study the inuence this has on the survival and population size of predator phenotypeswith a variety of foraging strategies. Our results indicate that the distribution of competition amongst prey is of littlesigni cance, provided that intraspeci c is stronger than the interspeci c, and that it is typically preferable for a predatorto adopt a foraging strategy that scales linearly with prey population sizes if it is alone. In an environment of multiplepredator phenotypes, the least or most-focused predators are most likely to persist, dependent on the feeding parameter.