The code illustrates a variation of the Gillespie algorithm I developed, for implementing stochastic ecological models accounting for multidimensional niche spaces. The code exemplifies the algorithm using a Lotka-Volterra model, and is provided as supplementary material of the corresponding paper, which is also available on the arXiv.
We develop a theoretical framework for analyzing ecological models with a multi-dimensional niche space. The novelty of our approach relies on the fact that ecological niches are described by sequences of symbols, which allows us to include multiple phenotypic traits. Ecological drivers, such as competitive exclusion, are modelled by introducing the Hamming distance between two sequences. We show that a suitable transform diagonalizes the community interaction matrix of these models, making it possible to predict the conditions for niche differentiation and the asymptotically long time population distributions of niches. We exemplify our method using the Lotka-Volterra equations and suggest a procedure to establish contact with experimental data.