24-40 hours.
We begin by briefly summarizing the methodology used for model assessment (Appendix B.1). Most of the assessment results presented are focused at the middle level of the overall model hierarchy (Fig 1). Since the environmental variables are central to all other model behavior, we start by assessing the environmental variables (Appendix B.2), then clams and background prey (Appendix B.3) and finally how crabs respond to both environmental conditions and prey availability (Appendix B.4). Finally, we consider how crab population dynamics were affected by altering the clam model in ways suggested during review of this manuscript (Appendix B.5).
Model parameter values used throughout this section (unless otherwise
noted) are summarized in Table C1. Assessment
results presented are conducted using a maximum hypoxic extent of 45%
and a Short hypoxic duration as described in the Methods. All
statistical analysis was done with the statistical package
R (Ihaka and Gentleman 1996) (http://cran.r-project.org). The MPG
movies were created using the programs GMV by Frank Ortega at Los
Alamos National Laboratory
(http://www-xdiv.lanl.gov/XCM/gmv/GMVHome.html) and Mplayer
(http://www.mplayerhq.hu/). All simulations were run on a Dell
Precision 340 Workstation with a 1.7 Ghz processor running Red Hat
Linux 9.0. Each 40 year simulation took 24-40 hours.