[Nonlinear population dynamics: complication in the age structure influences transition-to-chaos scenarios]

The work continues a series of studies on the evolution of a natural population of explicitly seasonal organisms. Model analyses have revealed relationships between the duration of ontogenesis and the pattern of temporal dynamics in size of an isolated population (i.e., the structure and dimensionality of the chaotic attractors). For nonlinear models of age-structured population dynamics (under long-lasting ontogenesis), increase in the reproductive potential is shown to result in the chaotic attractors whose structure and dimensionality changes in response to variations in the model parameters. When the ontogenesis becomes longer and more complicated, it does not, "on the average", augment the level of chaos in the attractors observed. There are wide enough regions in the space of the birth and death parameter values that provide for windows in the chaotic dynamics where the total or partial regularization occurs.