Chapter 18. Predator Prey Oscillations on the Kaibab Plateau

The relationship between predators and their prey has always occupied a special place in the minds of ecologists. There has probably been more written on the subject of predator-prey interactions than on any other single topic in ecology (Matson and Berryman 1992). Ricklefs (1990, p. 403) observes that population biologists have used predator-prey and parasitoid-host relationships as the basis for more general models of consumer-resource interactions. He describes "predation as a clean demographic event that readily lends itself to modeling, and he believes that predator-prey systems (and especially parasitoid-host systems) "can be brought into the laboratory and subjected to experimentation." The experiments reveal a fascinating variety of possibilities ranging from stable oscillations to violently unstable behavior.

The great interest in predator-prey systems makes them an ideal case for system dynamics. This chapter builds upon your previous understanding of the Kaibab system. It demonstrates how system dynamics may be used to examine the interaction between the deer herd and the predators on the Kaibab Plateau. Our purpose is to learn about the possible behavior of the predator and prey populations if the predators had not been exterminated in the early years of the century. The issue of predator removal is addressed in exercises at the end of the chapter.