Continuous seed dispersal simulations: a search strategy for suitable habitat

Abstract

In 2021, Treep et al. published the paper ”Seed dispersal as a search strategy: dynamic and fragmented landscapes select for multi-scale movement strategies in plants”. They developed a discrete simulation for plant dispersal. Their simulated environment is modelled by a grid, which needs to be very fine in order to get accurate results. For this reason, we introduce a continuous approach to improve the accuracy. In this thesis, a continuous simulation of plant dispersal is developed, using 1.5d piecewise linear functions as an approximation of distributions of plant dispersal. We create a simulation method that returns an ϵ-approximation of plant distributions and compare this continuous simulation method to the discrete simulation given by Treep. Our results largely confirm the findings by Treep, but imply that in some cases continuous simulation returns kernels that disperse over longer distances.