Effects of cell size and configuration in cellular automata based prey–predator modelling

Cellular automata (CA) have shown to be a viable approach in ecological modelling, in particular when dealing with local interactions between species and their environment. In CA modelling complex patterns emerge on a global scale through the evolution of interactions at a local level. Although the validity of a cell-based approach has successfully been demonstrated in numerous cases, very few studies have been reported that address the effects of cell size and configuration on the behaviours of CA-based models. In this paper, the performance of a cellular automaton based prey–predator model (EcoCA) developed by the author was first calibrated against the classical Lotka–Volterra (LV) model. The model was then used to investigate effects of cell size and cellular configurations (viz. the ‘computational stencil’). By setting up systematic simulation scenarios it was observed that the choice of a particular cell size has a clear effect on the resulting spatial patterns, while different cellular configurations affect both spatial patterns and system stability. On the basis of these findings, it is proposed to use the principal spatial scale of the studied ecosystem as CA model cell size and to apply the Moore type cell configuration. Methods for identifying principal spatial scales have been developed and are presented here.