Consumer-Resource Dynamics and Emergent Density Dependence

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a generalization of a classic consumer-resource model with a single population embedded in a community. It develops this physiologically structured consumer-resource model by extending the static model in Chapter 4. The chapter then studies how density dependence emerges in the model, and how it changes the population size spectrum. Finally, the chapter explores how some of the standard fisheries impact assessments from Chapter 5 are changed when density dependence is in the form of competition or cannibalism. Specifically, it shows how the appearance of late-life density dependence rocks one of the cornerstones of contemporary fisheries management: that we should fish only the largest fish. In some cases, it turns out that yield is instead maximized by fishing juveniles.