Transport equations for a microbial predator-prey community

Abstract

A transport equation is used which describes the temporal behavior of interacting populations in changing environments. The formulation takes into account the internal state variables of the individuals. The general theory is applied to the transient analysis of a microbial predator-prey system using an approximate model for the specific cell growth rate and multigroup formulism to approximate the mass distribution within the population. Experimental results in a Tetrahymena pyriformis— Aerobacter aerogenes system have been used to evaluate the group parameters and test the validity of the theoretical predictions.