Section: Software

VITELBIO

Participants : Jérôme Harmand, Alain Rapaport, Aline Libres.

In the scope of the VITELBIO project (see 7.9 ), we have developed a first prototype of a simulation software, in partnership with the ITK company and all the partners of the project. The software allows to draw interactively small networks of chemostats interconnected by transport and diffusion terms. Then, biological characteristics of a limited numbers of biotic/abiotic reactions in each reactor are chosen. The dynamical simulations of such networks are conducted within two main objectives:

• to help exploring the role of a spatial structure in the dynamics of substrates consumptions by micro-organisms, mimicking a network of microbial “hot-spots” as it can be observed in soil ecosystems;

• to help (micro)biologists training modelling simple ecosystem on a spatial structure they can choose themselves, and exploring on it the concepts of ecology.

This first version is downloadable on the web site of the project (http://sites.google.com/site/vitelbio/logiciel ), and is expected to be substantially enriched in a near future.