Predicting extinction of biological systems with competition

The chapter develops a practical algorithm for forecasting an extinction event in a biological system with interaction of species. The problem is cast in the framework of a stochastic multiple-predator single-prey Lotka-Volterra system. In this context, the prey population plays the role of a finite supply of food or resources, for which the predators species compete. Extinction is the event when either the resources are exhausted or all the competing predators die out. Given noisy and sporadic observations of the prey count (the quantity of resources), the proposed algorithm is capable of predicting the timing of the extinction event in a probabilistic manner. Remarkably, in doing so, it does not have to know how many predator species are competing for resources