A METAPHYSIOLOGICAL POPULATION MODEL OF STORAGE IN VARIABLE ENVIRONMENTS

. We use mechanistic arguments to generalize a hierarchical metaphysiological approach developed by one of us to modeling biological populations (Getz, [1991, 1993]) and extend the approach to include a storage component in the population. We model the growth of single species and consumer‐resource interactions, both with and without storage. Our approach unifies modeling storage across trophic levels and is much simpler and more efficient to implement numerically than individual based approaches or population approaches that include integral, delay, or partial differential equation components in the model. Using intake functions (i.e., functional responses) that include the effects of interference competition, we apply the model to a hypothetical herbivore feeding on a resource that fluctuates seasonally and demonstrate the importance of a flow from storage that buffers the population against periods when resources are scarce or absent. We also apply the model to a hypothetical plant population that is driven by fluctuating resources and demonstrate the importance of a translocation flow from storage at the end of a dormant season, corresponding to periods when resources are most scarce. Finally, we couple these two populations for the case where the herbivore feeds exclusively on non‐storage biomass, and demonstrate how the population dynamics can be affected by the rates at which buffering and translocation flows transfer from storage to active tissue in the herbivore and plant populations. In particular, for certain buffering and translocation flow rates, 1‐year unimodal, 2‐year bimodal, and 2‐year unimodal cycles can emerge in the same herbivore population.