Section 6 - Correspondence to Reality
Is this a realistic system?
Of course it's not. But it makes sense, in a sort of idealistic way. There's simply no way to take into account all of the real-world variables. Here are a few examples of things it doesn't cover:
- It makes no allowance for other animals or plants and how their populations might affect the two species.
- It makes no allowance for natural conditions such as winter, drought, etc...
There's also a little mathematical quirk that presents a problem:
- It allows the populations to get infinitely small. This
isn't a problem in this system because populations that are that close to
zero will become negative (that is, extinct) anyway. In the next system
that we examine, however, this problem will be more significant.
The Predator-Prey System