Abstract
Stories of lambs and wolves have been told since a very long time and the interaction between predators and preys represent the most dramatic aspect of the struggle for life 2. The incipit of Fedro's fable seems to deal with a case of competition … for the resource of a rivum eundem … but we should not trust on the wolf's complaint … since the beginning of the world wolves are wolves and lambs are lambs … each of the two species plays a precise role in the scheme of Nature … the struggle is unfair and the conclusion well expected …
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Notes
- 1.
1 The Wolf and the Lamb/ By thirst incited; to the brook/ The Wolf and Lamb themselves betook./ The Wolf high up the current drank,/ The Lamb far lower down the bank./ Then, bent his ravenous maw to cram,/ The Wolf took umbrage at the Lamb./ “How dare you trouble all the flood,/ And mingle my good drink with mud?”/ “Sir,” says the Lambkin, sore afraID,/ “How should I act, as you upbraID?/ The thing you mention cannot be,/ The stream descends from you to me.”/ Abash'd by facts, says he, “I know/ 'Tis now exact six months ago/ You strove my honest fame to blot” –/ “Six months ago, sir, I was not.”/ “Then 'twas th’ old ram thy sire,” he cried,/ And so he tore him, till he died./ To those this fable I address/ Who are determined to oppress,/ And trump up any false pretence,/ But they will injure innocence./ (Translation by Christopher Smart 1913)
- 2.
2 The struggle for life came to the fore with Charles Darwin and “The Origin of Species”. Later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Life Struggle, Struggle for Existence, Lutte pour la Vie … were the ways Alfred Lotka, Georgii Frantsevich Gause, Vito Volterra named the subject of their studies (see 6, 8, 16).
- 3.
3 Actually in 12 the model is not explicitly formulated in terms of differential equations. Nevertheless the model is usually named after Rosenzweig and MacArthur because the shape of the isocline reflects the graphical description discussed in the paper.
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Iannelli, M., Pugliese, A. (2014). Predator-prey models. In: An Introduction to Mathematical Population Dynamics. UNITEXT(), vol 79. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03026-5_6
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