Noise Correlation Induced Synchronization in a Mutualism Ecosystem

Abstract

Understanding the cause of the synchronization of population evolution is an important issue for ecological improvement. Here we present a Lotka-Volterra-type model driven by two correlated environmental noises and show, via theoretical analysis and direct simulation, that noise correlation can induce a synchronization of the mutualists. The time series of mutual species exhibit a chaotic-like fluctuation, which is independent to the noise correlation, however, the chaotic fluctuation of mutual species ratio decreases with the noise correlation. A quantitative parameter defined for characterizing chaotic fluctuation provides a good approach to measure when the complete synchronization happens.

6pages,4figures