[Marwhini]

And, as a point about some of the assumptions of the Lotka-Volterra Models.

It is possible to including Initial Conditions for different assumptions.

Such as that the Prey Population does not have an exponential Population Growth, and instead has some other function that covers population growth.

These starting conditions affect the total population sizes of both the Prey and Predators.

In the Competitive and Mutual models, we can also show relationships where both populations prey upon each other (many Aquatic populations are like this, as are human populations, to which the models also apply).

Edit: Parasitic relationships can be different than Predator-Prey, depending upon the type of Parasite. For instance Mosquitos can have populations that are hundreds of billions the size of their host populations.

And it may be the case that we need to build an entirely new model for the relationship between Orcs and Humans than the existing Predator-Prey model.

But the existing Mutualistic or Competitive Models seem to be flexible enough to deal with the relationship we see between Orc and Human in Middle-earth, where the two Populations are Mutually dependent upon a single set of resources, Yet compete for those resources, while Humanity largely falls Prey to Orcs (a relationship that does not exist in reverse - Humans, Hobbits, nor Elves in Middle-earth will capture Orcs to use either as forced labor, or as a source of food itself).

This is an area where we have yet only looked at a very generalized relationship, as it is a long way down our list of priorities in getting an Operationalized Middle-earth functioning as a Model.

MB