Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001
| SS24 The Ecology of Pelagic Gelatinous Zooplankton |
| Date: Monday, February 12, 2001, Time: 3:45:00 PM |
| Location: Acoma/Zuni/Tesuque |
| Laval, P, , Université Paris 6/C.N.R.S., Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, laval@obs-vlfr.fr |
| USING ARTIFICIAL SALPS AND AMPHIPODS TO MODEL THE DEVELOPMENT OF SALPA FUSIFORMIS SWARMS |
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| RTS3 (Real-Time Salp Swarm Simulation) is an agent-based simulation using artificial creatures mimicking real salps and their Vibilia parasitoids. The artificial salps reproduce giving oozooids and chains of aggregates, while the artificial amphipods develop on these hosts. Each autonomous individual salp filters food, grows, moves, and reproduces or dies according to its age and reserves level. Individuals have their own clocks, independent from each other's. Small lags due to different birth dates account for lots of various interactions, a situation nearer to what occurs in the ocean. This software is programmed in Ada 95, a concurrent, very strongly typed, object-oriented language. Like in any model with many inter-related parameters, the difficulty lies in setting a value for many of them. RTS3 is rather an exploratory tool providing virtual tunicates on which it is possible to experiment without laboratory or sampling biases. For example, simulations with RTS3 indicate that a reduced filtration rate increases swarm development. RTS3 is developed under the GNU General Public License; the source code and documentation will be available for download from my home page: http://www.obs-vlfr.fr/~laval. |
| This Session Listing |
