Apex predator and the cyclic competition in a rock-paper-scissors game of three species

Abstract

This work deals with the effects of an apex predator on the cyclic competition among three distinct species that follow the rules of the rock-paper-scissors game. The investigation develops standard stochastic simulations but is motivated by a novel procedure which is explained in the work. We add the apex predator as the fourth species in the system that contains three species that evolve following the standard rules of migration, reproduction and predation, and study how the system evolves in this new environment, in comparison with the case in the absence of the apex predator. The results show that the apex predator engenders the tendency to spread uniformly in the lattice, contributing to destroy the spiral patterns, keeping biodiversity but diminishing the average size of the clusters of the species that compete cyclically.

7 pages, 7 figures. To appear in PRE

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Pattern formations driven by cyclic interactions: a brief review of recent developments
• Basin entropy behavior in a cyclic model of the rock-paper-scissors type
• Performance of weak species in the simplest generalization of the rock-paper-scissors model to four species
• Weak species in rock-paper-scissors models
• Effects of a pestilent species on the stability of cyclically dominant species
• Death by starvation in May-Leonard models