Population dynamics of generalist and specialist strategies under feast-famine cycles
Fig 3
Transition between generalist and specialist dominance.
Temporally averaged populations of the one generalist and two specialists as a function of . Crosses (×) denote results with constant nutrient supply intervals (
), whereas circles (•) denote those with gamma-distributed intervals (
). Above this, the adjacent top panel illustrates the mean duration of the feast phase,
, for the respective conditions. The secondary top x-axis displays the ratio
. Here,
(
) and
(
) denote the arithmetic means of the growth and death rates of the generalist (specialist) across the two environmental conditions. Populations were averaged from t = 2.5 × 105 to t = 3.0 × 105 across 10 simulations; error bars indicate standard error. At each nutrient supply event, one of the two nutrient types (A or B) is chosen at random. All other parameters follow Fig 2C and 2D.