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8. RELATED PHENOMENA IN HIGHER DIMENSIONS

Pairs of coupled, first-order difference equations (equivalent to a single second-order equation) have been investigated in several contexts 4, 44 - 46, particularly in the study of temperate zone arthropod prey-predator systems 2 - 4, 23, 47. In these two-dimensional systems, the complications in the dynamical behaviour are further compounded by such facts as: (1) even for analytical functions, there can be truly chaotic behaviour (as for equations (14) and (15)), corresponding to so-called "strange attractors"; and (2) two or more different stable states (for example, a stable point and a stable cycle of period 3) can occur together for the same parameter values 4. In addition, the manifestation of these phenomena usually requires less severe nonlinearities (less steeply humped F(X)) than for the one-dimensional case.

Similar systems of first-order ordinary differential equations, or two coupled first-order differential equations, have much simpler dynamical behaviour, made up of stable and unstable points and limit cycles 48. This is basically because in continuous two-dimensional systems the inside and outside of closed curves can be distinguished; dynamic trajectories cannot cross each other. The situation becomes qualitatively more complicated and in many ways analogous to first-order difference equations when one moves to systems of three or more coupled, first-order ordinary differential equations (that is, three-dimensional systems of ordinary differential equations). Scanlon (personal communication) has argued that chaotic behaviour and "strange attractors", that is solutions which are neither points nor periodic orbits 48, are typical of such systems. Some well studied examples arise in models for reaction-diffusion systems in chemistry and biology 49, and in the models of Lorenz 15 (three dimensions) and Ruelle and Takens 40 (four dimensions) referred to above. The analysis of these systems is, by virtue of their higher dimensionality, much less transparent than for equation (1).

An explicit and rather surprising example of a system which has recently been studied from this viewpoint is the ordinary differential equations used in ecology to describe competing species. For one or two species these systems are very tame: dynamic trajectories will converge on some stable equilibrium point (which may represent coexistence, or one or both species becoming extinct). As Smale 50 has recently shown, however, for 3 or more species these general equations can, in a certain reasonable and well-defined sense, be compatible with any dynamical behaviour. Smale's 50 discussion is generic and abstract: a specific study of the very peculiar dynamics which can be exhibited by the familiar Lotka-Volterra equations once there are 3 competitors is given by May and Leonard 51.

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