Figure 4.
Mean time to extinction, the rate at which aggregates transition from hosting target species to a state with zero target species cells. Rates are the average of all extinction events over 10,000 simulated minutes; a rate of 10−4 indicates extinction did not occur following the initial colonization. Axes are log10-transformed, and colors represent the constant background density of the target species in the water surrounding an aggregate. Means and 95% confidence intervals are for the rates from all simulations for each parameter combination.