Design and analysis of a parallel Daphnia model

The subject of this study is the parallelization of an existing serial implementa-tion of an individual-based population model for Daphnia and the analysis of the subsequent model. To form the parallel model, the serial model was examined and the inherently parallel features identified. Several aspects of parallel programming were also considered as the form of the parallel model was resolved. Once the paral-lel algorithm was written, the resulting model was checked to confirm the accuracy of the results and to determine whether the parallel model offered any advantages over the serial model. The analysis revealed that the parallel model returned results consistent with those given by the serial model, and that the parallel model does offer advantages such as improved speed and model complexity over the serial model. The conclusion is that the parallel algorithm advances the state of the model, and reinforces parallelization as a useful tool for ecological modeling.