Aaron A. King, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and MathematicsUniversity of Michigan
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Anatomy of a chaotic attractor: subtle model-predicted patterns revealed in population data
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 101: 408-413, 2004.
Abstract
Mathematically, chaotic dynamics are not devoid of order but
display episodes of near-cyclic temporal patterns. This is
illustrated, in interesting ways, in the case of chaotic biological
populations. Despite the individual nature of organisms and the
noisy nature of biological time series, subtle temporal patterns
have been detected. Using data drawn from chaotic insect
populations, we show quantitatively that chaos manifests itself as
a tapestry of identifiable and predictable patterns woven together
by stochasticity. We show too that the mixture of patterns an
experimentalist can expect to see depends on the scale of the
system under study.
For reprints of this paper, contact me at aaron.king@umich.edu. An electronic reprint (PDF) is also available.