Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Ecology: Insights from Physics

Simulations of invasion in cyclic predator-prey systems show plane waves behind the invasion front. When the selected plane wave is unstable, there is a band of plane waves of constant width, followed by spatiotemporal chaos. We describe a new method for calculating the width of this band, based on the absolute stability of plane waves in moving frames of reference. This calculation shows that the band width can be very sensitive to changes in parameters, and we discuss the ecological implications of thisresult.