Population Dynamics: Logistic Growth & Lotka-Volterra

Ecologists model how populations change over time with a handful of coupled equations: logistic growth describes a single species settling toward the carrying capacity its environment can support, while the Lotka-Volterra equations add a predator to produce the boom-and-bust cycles seen in real predator-prey systems, from lynx and snowshoe hare to plankton and their grazers. This simulation runs both models live — a real Runge-Kutta integration drives the number of prey and predator agents visible on the meadow — so you can watch how growth rate, carrying capacity, predation rate, conversion efficiency and death rate reshape the population curves, and where a stable coexistence equilibrium does or doesn't exist.