Modeling Asian Carp Invasion Using Evolutionary Game Theory

Abstract

Asian Carp were imported from China in the 1970s to improve water quality of aquaculture and to control aquatic vegetation ponds in the Mississippi river along Illinois. However, they subsequently migrated from ponds into the Mississippi river, where they quickly reached high population density. They are considered invasive species, highly detrimental to ecological balance as they threaten the native fish population eating up the algae and other microscopic organisms essential for the survival of the native fish. The Asian Carp now threatens the Upper Mississippi river and the Great Lakes. The goal of our paper is to model interactions between native species and Asian Carp using evolutionary game theory. We provide conditions under which the native species can coexist and under which they cannot be invaded by Asian Carp. We show that, without the presence of Asian Carp, (1) the proportion of native predators positively correlates with the available resources in the river and (2) for a healthy population of native species to exist, one needs to have the resources within a reasonable range, not too low and not too high as otherwise either the predators or the prey species go would extinct. Our model also shows that the invasion can be best prevented by lowering the amount of available resources while at the same time selectively harming the population of Asian Carp.