The concept of discrete description of plant ontogenesis and cellular automata models of plant populations

The article represents a link between the concept of discrete description of the ontogenesis of plants and the cellular automata approach for the spatial-temporal modelling of plant population dynamics. The continuous process of individual plant development may be subdivided into several stages on the basis of morphological indicators reflecting functional importance of plants at different stages. The number and duration of age stages may vary from species to species, among life-forms within species, and under different environment conditions. The duration of age stages and the probability of transition from one stage to another for a given plant depend on the plant’s neighbourhood pattern, the type of ontogenesis and the site conditions. Such data are available from numerous field studies. esented approach allows simulation of a plant population as a set of cellular automata located on a plane. The age stages of these automata can be changed according to simple rules, which reflect the types of plant ontogenesis, different life spans of age states, and different sizes of plants in the neighbourhood. This approach is different from matrix models, which are usually used for this purpose, in that here we can directly simulate the role of space interactions in the population dynamics. We constructed some cellular automata models based on experimental data, which reflect the ontogenesis types and life-forms of plants. The models demonstrate that simple rules of plant development with simply defined local interactions lead to complicated dynamics. The results show new possibilities of applications of discrete simulation modelling for analysis of plant populations and community dynamics.