M.V.Lomonosov Moscow University, Vorob'evy Gory, Moscow 119899, Russia

Abstract

The scenario of model investigation of competition is as follows. An investigator supposes there is competition between two species. Only data on species abundance are available. The question is if the hypothesis of competition can be tested by means of correlation and regression analyses of available data. Data and species abundances are imitated by Monte-Carlo simulation. The model is essentially a Lotka - Volterra - Gause system of two differential equations but some random perturbations according to Renshaw (1991) are also included, as well as random errors in abundance estimation. Several variants of experimental protocol which includes specification of data processing algorithms are considered. Some of them turned out to be extremely bad (large amount of experimental data and ineffective data processing), while others were satisfactory. It is hardly possible to discern these possibilities on purely theoretical grounds. For this reason, a preliminary Monte-Carlo simulation of the real biological experiment is highly recommendable, even in the cases when the model adopted for random perturbation is not completely adequate.