The model: part 2

It's a rainy Tuesday on Cape Cod. We're still in social isolation, and I'm still working on my model.

One of the simulated communities my model produced.
Each color represents a different species.

I'm actually pretty glad I have all this free time to dedicate to it right now. I'm making a lot of progress. Over the last week, I've figured out how to make my species grow and occupy area on the panels. I even figured out how to control which species can overgrow others. In the real world, fouling communities are all about overgrowth. Things like ascidians and bryozoans are constantly spreading their edges and trying to cover over one another. Space is at a premium, so whoever is on top wins. I was very excited to be able to simulate these competitive interactions with probabilities in my model!

Another piece I've had to code is the species' temperature tolerances. I noticed during my dock study experiment that some species completely disappeared from the panels later in the summer. When temperatures rose too high, they died off, so I wanted to include that in my simulation as well. Thankfully, there's a lot of published literature on how different species thrive (or don't!) in different temperature regimes, so I was able to draw on the results of previous experiments and incorporate realistic values into my model.

Being stuck at home is hard, but I'm actually managing to be reasonably productive. I'm grateful for the extra time to build my model and finish up a cool project.