An Agent-Based Model for Simulating the Interactions of Tigers, Leopards, and Wild Boars to Support Wildlife Conservation Planning
Main Article Content
Abstract
Wildlife conservation is a pressing global concern, with the need to create and manage protected areas where multiple species can coexist without facing the threat of extinction. In this paper, we proposed an Agent-Based Model that simulates the interactions and life activities of tigers, leopards, and wild boars within a 400 km2 area, approximately the area of standard conservation. The model incorporates the three animal species' physical characteristics and behavioral traits to analyze their mutual influence within the environment. The emergence results indicate that changes in the wild boar population size affect the survival of tigers and leopards, with population increases or decreases in one species impacting the others. Moreover, when tigers or leopards become dominant in population size, they consume more wild boar, leading to increased competition and potential extinction of the other species. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of the non-uniform distribution of plant food resources in conservation areas, emphasizing that wild boar food resources should occupy at least 70% of the site. These findings are valuable for understanding ecological dynamics, informing conservation area design, and predicting scenarios requiring human intervention to maintain species balance. This is one of the first studies to utilize an Agent-Based Model to research the activities of animal species, thereby aiding in the construction of conservation areas.
Keywords
agent-based modeling, ODD protocol, tiger-leopard-wild boar system, foodweb
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
References
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[4] J. W. Testa, K. J. Mock, C. Taylor, H. Koyuk, J. R. Coyle, and R. Waggoner, Agent-based modeling of the dynamics of mammal-eating killer whales and their prey, Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol. 466, pp. 275– 291, 2012. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps09845
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[6] E. Neil, J. K. Madsen, E. Carrella, N. Payette, and R. Bailey, Agent- based modelling as a tool for elephant poaching mitigation, Ecological Modelling, vol. 427, p. 109054, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2020.109054
[7] P. J. Glynn, P. W. Glynn, J. Maté, and B. Riegl, Agentbased model of eastern pacific damselfish and sea urchin interactions shows increased coral reef erosion under post-enso conditions, Ecological Modelling, vol. 423, p. 108999, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2020.108999
[8] E. G. Diouf, T. Brévault, S. Ndiaye, E. Faye, A. Chailleux, P. Diatta, and C. Piou, An agent-based model to simulate the boosted sterile in- sect technique for fruit fly management, Ecological Modelling, vol. 468, p. 109951, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2022.109951
[9] V. Grimm, S. F. Railsback, C. E. Vincenot, U. Berger, C. Gallagher, D. L. DeAngelis, B. Edmonds, J. Ge, J. Giske, J. Groeneveld, A. S. Johnston, A. Milles, J. Nabe-Nielsen, G. Polhill, V. Radchuk, M. S. Rohw ̈ader, R. A. Stillman, J. C. Thiele, and D. Ayllón, The odd protocol for describing agent-based and other simulation models: A second update to improve clarity, replication, and structural realism, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 23, no. 2, p. 7, 2020. https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.4259
[10] J. G. Polhill, D. Parker, D. Brown, and V. Grimm, Using the odd protocol for describing three agent-based social simulation models of land-use change, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 11, no. 2, p. 3, 2008. [11] V. Grimm, U. Berger, D. L. DeAngelis, J. G. Polhill, J. Giske, and S. F. Railsback, The odd protocol: a review and first update, Ecological Modelling, vol. 221, no. 23, pp. 2760–2768, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.08.019
[12] M. Kleiber, Body size and metabolic rate, Physiological Reviews, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 511–541, 1947. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.1947.27.4.511
[13] A. P. Jacobson and Gerngross, Leopard (panthera pardus) status, distribution, and the research efforts acr8oss its range, PeerJ, vol. 4, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1974
[14] R. Boers, K. Dijkmann, and G. Wijngaards, Shelf-life of vacuum-packaged wild boar meat in relation to that of vacuum-packaged pork: relevance of intrinsic factors, Meat Science, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 91–102, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1016/0309-1740(94)90147-3
[15] J. L. D. Smith and C. McDougal, The contribution of variance in lifetime reproduction to effective population size in tigers, Conservation Biology, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 484–490, 1991. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.1991.tb00355.x [16] G. Massei and P. V. Genov, The environmental impact of wild boar, Galemys, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 135–145, 2004.