Behavioral changes that result from rapid environmental shifts such as those brought about by human activity are some of the most immediate and consequential responses in the biotic world. However, deriving community models that take into account non-trivial behavior and therefore the ecological significance of those changes is an ongoing challenge in ecology. Here, we propose methods for deriving community models from populations of evolved agents who both forage and avoid predation. We exemplify those methods with a case study of sensory pollution by manipulating the sensor of the agents and deriving functions that characterize resulting interaction rates with both food and predators. We believe these methods can apply to any question regarding how a specific behavior or behavioral change will affect community structure and population dynamics. Spatial limitations of the method are discussed as an area for future work.

Behavior has an understated role in the genesis of complex ecologies. Discussion of ecological regulation describes the phenomenon in terms of coupled feedbacks which have been connected by Harvey (2004) to rein control as introduced by Clynes (1969). These descriptions have motivated the question of how communities that instantiate such feedbacks can evolve in the first place, especially with respect to global regulatory effects such as those supposed in Lovelock and Margulis’ Gaia theory (1974). While Gaian regulation is not incompatible with evolution, it appears there are intermediate steps that are necessary for its establishment, and likely the establishment of coupled ecological regulation at any scale. Here we present a series of dynamical models that show how simple dormancy behavior can help account for that differential survival across a variety of seasonal conditions. Furthermore, the combination of that behavior and a traditional rein control mechanism lead to a significant increase in survivable conditions, providing a hypothesis for how ecological regulation may be scaffolded. Further discussion suggests that effective behavior of pioneer species is a requirement for the establishment of robust ecosystems.