Confinement of dynamical chaos expansion in rotifer populations inhabiting heterogeneous environments: an effect of attractor size invariance

We study the impact of inter-habitat interactions in rotifer populations with intrinsically different types of dynamics: chaotic and regular. For this purpose we use a modified version of the Consensus model. The Consensus model has been shown to be realistic enough to reproduce distinguishing features of the rotifer species dynamics. Being uncoupled, a habitat with chaotic dynamics and habitats with regular oscillations of the rotifer density do not affect each other. Migration of the rotifers between the habitats leads to the invasion of chaos into neighboring habitats, that is chaotic rotifer oscillations replace regular oscillations of the rotifer density in neighboring habitats. The invasion of chaos distorts spatial borders of the rotifer oscillations synchronization clusters. We show that the invasion of chaos is spatially confined. Invariance of the attractor size under transformation of regular oscillations into chaotic ones is demonstrated to be responsible for the chaos confinement.