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Abstract
We propose a simple model of toxin-producing phytoplankton–zooplankton interactions in which the former is assumed to be able to detect the presence of zooplankton and to counteract it by forming patches and by releasing some toxic chemicals in the surrounding water. We observe that the formation of patch by the toxin-producing phytoplankton decreases the grazing pressure of zooplankton, resulting in stronger coupling between the interacting species determined by the fraction of the phytoplankton population that aggregates to form patches. Finally, the results were validated by comparing them with an alternative spatial model.
Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the learned reviewers for their useful suggestions and comments. The authors also thank Dr. Sanjay Chaudhuri for providing the initial Matlab code for the diffusion model. The work of Samrat Chatterjee was partially supported by MIUR Bando per borse a favore di giovaniricercatori indiani and the work of Joydev Chattopadhyay was partially supported by the MAE Indo-Italian program of cooperation in Science and Technology, ‘Biomedical Sciences’.
Notes
Present address: Immunology Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi-110067, India.