Cyclic competition of four or more species: Results from mean field theory and stochastic simulations

Population dynamics is a venerable subject, dating back two centuries to Malthus, Verhulst, Lotka, Volterra, and many others. Nonetheless, new and interesting phenomena are continually being discovered. For example, the recent discovery of ``Survival of the Weakest'' in cyclic competition between 3 species with no spatial structure (Berr, Reichenbach, Schottenloher, and Frey, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 048102 (2009)) attracted considerable attention, e.g., http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090213115127.htm. Considering a similar system with 4 or more species, we find a more intuitively understandable principle which appears to underpin all systems with cyclically competing species. We will present several interesting aspects of the 4 species system -- from non-linear dynamical phenomena in a deterministic mean-field approach to remarkable extinction probabilities in the stochastic evolution of a finite system. Some insights into the deterministic dynamics, gained from generalizing this system to one with any number of species with arbitrary pairwise interactions, will also be discussed.