Experimental and Theoretical Research on the Ecologically Stable Species Set

从80年代末开始。基于个体的模型(IBM)和人工生命(A-Life)等技术已经被用作更好地理解生命过程的新技术。这些方法不同于传统的微分方程模型，因为这些技术试图自下而上地构建模型系统。这些技术似乎更适合描述和分析实际的生物群落。在本研究中，我们在以往对菜豆-豆象-寄生蜂系统的实验研究的基础上，构建了IBM模型和A-Life模型，并用自下而上的方法研究了物种丰度与系统稳定性的关系。在过去的三年里，我们构建了由菜豆、豆象和寄生蜂组成的营养水平的实验群落(每个水平有多个物种)，并跟踪了它们的动态。另一方面，我们基于A-Life方法，从相对简单的到日益复杂的，构建了模拟模型，并研究了它们的动态变化，目的是为了确定在经历了种内和种间资源竞争以及捕食者与捕食者相互作用的漫长进化过程后，生态稳定物种集(ESSS)的存在的可能性。我们将这些结果与A-Life系统的结果进行了比较，在A-Life系统中也发现了几个这样的ESSS。最后，我们讨论了ESSS概念的重要性和生物群落的进化。

Since late 80s. the techniques such as Individual Based Model (IBM) and Artificial Life (A-Life) has been used as new techniques for better understanding the life process. These approaches differ from traditional differential equation models in the sense that these techniques try to construct the model system from bottom-up. These techniques seem to be more appropriate to describe and analyze the actual biological communities. In this study, we aimed to constract IBM and A-Life model based on our previous experimental studies on bean-bean weevil-parasitic wasp system, and to investigate the relationship between species abundance and system stability by bottom-up approach. Also, we aimed to compare the emergent model dynamics with dynamics of our experimental systems.During the past three years, we constructed experimental communities of theee trophic levels composed of bean, bean weevils, and parasitic wasps (multi species for each level), and followed their dynamics. On tho other hand, we constructed simulation models based on the A-Life approach, starting from relatively simple ones to increasingly complex ones, and investigated their dynamics.Our particular aim was to identify the possibility of the existence of "Ecologicaily Stable Species Set" (ESSS) after the long process of evolution in the systems experiencing thc intra-and interspecific competition for resource and also tho prey-predator interactions. We compared these results with those from A-Life systems in which we also found several such ESSS's. Finally we diseussed the importance of the concept of ESSS and the evolution of biotic communiites.