A Causal-Behavioral Map of the Predator-prey Oscillatory
System using Pathway Participation Metrics.
M. Mojtahedzadeh
Department of Industrial Engineering,
POBox 89195-741
Yazd, Iran
Tel: 98 351 662111
Fax: 98 351 25777
yz-un-ar @ www.dci.co.ir
At the heart of effective decision making in dynamic complex systems is the telling
consistent and eloquent system stories linking cause-and-effect relations to time and
space. Historically, while lack of a formal technique for story telling has been
recognized, such stories have been told by experience modelers using guess work and
tedious and sometime highly mathematical sensitivity analysis. This paper reports an
old-correct hypothesis, but not fully tested, about the connection between the behavior of
the predator-prey oscillatory system and its structure. The application of pathway
participation technique in the predator-prey model demonstrates that shifts in the
dominance of the minor loops from one to another cause a sustain oscillation in the
system.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0