Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, South Florida-Caribbean CESU: Investigating Seasonal Dynamics in the Everglades Food Webs

The model will meet the following specifications. It will contain a food web structure with the following levels: primary producer (periphyton), detritus, invertebrate detritivores, fish consumers and nutrients, which are recycled within the system. The model is spatially explicit on a 100  100 grid of square cells (though this size can be increased if needed) representing a segment of the Everglades hydroscape, each cell being assumed to be 100  100 meters. For example, the overall modeled landscape could consist of an area resembling the east-southern Taylor Slough in the Everglades. Hydrology is represented by rising and falling water levels through the year, following typical empirical patterns. In this food web structure, the fish are assumed to move seasonally, with a fraction being allowed to move up the gradient during floods and down the gradient during falling water.

There are two basic parts to the model. The first is the structure of the food web and the equations describing fluxes between food web components. This set of equations is assumed to be the same for each of the 10,000 cells. The second part of the model is the set of rules for the movement of fish and crayfish species of the food web between the spatial cells.