Application of a Lotka-Volterra model to an insect ecological system

The aim of this work is to develop a model for predicting the population density of species present in barley fields in Sweden using the Lotka-Volterra model. To achieve this, analytical techniques from dynamical systems theory and statistical physics are employed, and the resulting model is compared with empirical data. The main issue is to infer the interaction coefficients of the model assuming that the available measures refer to a stationary state. Due to the uncertainty in the measures, the predictive model is able to provide qualitative information on the evolution of the ecological system. We found that the system can exhibit nontrivial collective behavior, In particular, the ecological systems of each field exhibit an oscillatory behavior for the prey and predator macro-groups, which can be assimilated to the Lotka–Volterra model.