Team of scientists puts an as yet unrivalled long-term experiment into practice

Predator-prey relations are fundamental phenomena in ecology. Often, they are characterised by fluctuations on a regular basis. An international team of researchers around Prof. Dr. Bernd Blasius has now observed these oscillations in a long-term experiment on the aquatic invertebrate Brachionus calyciflorus and its prey, the green algal species Monoraphidium minutum. The findings were published in the recent issue of Nature magazine. The scientists investigated the delicate predator-prey relationship for 50 cycles, an as yet unrivalled period in the investigation of these ecological cycles.

Press release University of Oldenburg [German only]

Original article: B. Blasius, L. Rudolf, G. Weithoff, U. Gaedke, G.F. Fussmann: „Long-term cyclic persistence in an experimental predator-prey system“ Nature 2019, doi  10.1038/s41586-019-1857-0