J. C. Sprott, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that a recently proposed spatiotemporal model for the ecology of Easter Island admits periodic and chaotic attractors, not previously reported. Such behavior may more realistically depict the population dynamics of general ecosystems and illustrates the power of simple models to produce the kind of complex behavior that is ubiquitous in such systems.

Keywords: chaos, Easter Island, ecology, population dynamics, Turing instability