ABSTRACT
Many ecologists now believe that heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of predator and prey populations may help stabilize population levels over time. This heterogeneity is thought to emerge naturally as a result of the local nature of interactions. As a first step toward developing population models which take spatial correlations into account, I have investigated spatial heterogeneity in the 2-dimensional contact process, a very simple population model. I present data and simple theoretical predictions for several measures of heterogeneity and note which predictions appear to be robust even in the presence of fairly strong correlations.
