Evolution of a semilinear parabolic system for migration and selection without dominance

The semilinear parabolic system that describes the evolution of the gene frequencies in the diffusion approximation for migration and selection at a multiallelic locus without dominance is investigated. The population occupies a finite habitat of arbitrary dimensionality and shape (i.e., a bounded, open domain in Rd). The selection coefficients depend on position; the drift and diffusion coefficients may depend on position. The primary focus of this paper is the dependence of the evolution of the gene frequencies on λ, the strength of selection relative to that of migration. It is proved that if migration is sufficiently strong (i.e., λ is sufficiently small) and the migration operator is in divergence form, then the allele with the greatest spatially averaged selection coefficient is ultimately fixed. The stability of each vertex (i.e., an equilibrium with exactly one allele present) is completely specified. The stability of each edge equilibrium (i.e., one with exactly two alleles present) is fully described when either (i) migration is sufficiently weak (i.e., λ is sufficiently large) or (ii) the equilibrium has just appeared as λ increases. The existence of unexpected, complex phenomena is established: even if there are only three alleles and migration is homogeneous and isotropic (corresponding to the Laplacian), (i) as λ increases, arbitrarily many changes of stability of the edge equilibria and corresponding appearance of an internal equilibrium can occur and (ii) the conditions for protection or loss of an allele can both depend nonmonotonically on λ. Neither of these phenomena can occur in the diallelic case.     

Loops and branches of coexistence states in a Lotka-Volterra competition model

A two-species Lotka-Volterra competition-diffusion model with spatially inhomogeneous reaction terms is investigated. The two species are assumed to be identical except for their interspecific competition coefficients. Viewing their common diffusion rate μ as a parameter, we describe the bifurcation diagram of the steady states, including stability, in terms of two real functions of μ. We also show that the bifurcation diagram can be rather complicated. Namely, given any two positive integers l and b, the interspecific competition coefficients can be chosen such that there exist at least l bifurcating branches of positive stable steady states which connect two semi-trivial steady states of the same type (they vanish at the same component), and at least b other bifurcating branches of positive stable steady states that connect semi-trivial steady states of different types.     

A Semilinear Parabolic System for Migration and Selection in Population Genetics

The semilinear parabolic system that describes the evolution of the gene frequencies in the diffusion approximation for migration and selection at a multiallelic locus is investigated. The population occupies a finite habitat of arbitrary dimensionality and shape. The selection coefficients depend on position; the drift and diffusion coefficients may do so. For two alleles (the scalar case), the global analysis of D. Henry (1981, “Geometric Theory of Semilinear Parabolic Equations,” Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 840, Springer-Verlag, Berlin) is extended from homogeneous, isotropic migration (corresponding to the Laplacian) to arbitrary migration (corresponding to an arbitrary elliptic operator). For multiple alleles, sufficient conditions are given for the global loss of an allele that is nowhere the fittest. In the case of no dominance with at least one change in the direction of selection, sufficient conditions are established for global convergence to a stable equilibrium with all the intermediate alleles absent and one or two extreme alleles present. Sufficient conditions on the migration pattern for casting the elliptic operator into variational form are proved; in this case, the above results become more explicit.     

Nonmonotone travelling waves in a single species reaction-diffusion equation with delay

We prove the existence of a continuous family of positive and generally nonmonotone travelling fronts for delayed reaction-diffusion equations , when g∈C²(R₊,R₊) has exactly two fixed points: x₁=0 and x₂=K>0. Recently, nonmonotonic waves were observed in numerical simulations by various authors. Here, for a wide range of parameters, we explain why such waves appear naturally as the delay h increases. For the case of g with negative Schwarzian, our conditions are rather optimal; we observe that the well known Mackey-Glass-type equations with diffusion fall within this subclass of (∗). As an example, we consider the diffusive Nicholson's blowflies equation.     

Asymptotic profiles of the positive steady state for an SIS epidemic reaction-diffusion model. Part I

To capture the impact of spatial heterogeneity of environment and movement of individuals on the persistence and extinction of a disease, Allen et al. in [L.J.S. Allen, B.M. Bolker, Y. Lou, A.L. Nevai, Asymptotic profiles of the steady states for an SIS epidemic reaction-diffusion model, Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. Ser. A 21 (1) (2008) 1-20] proposed a spatial SIS (susceptible-infected-susceptible) reaction-diffusion model, and studied the existence, uniqueness and particularly the asymptotic behavior of the endemic equilibrium as the diffusion rate of the susceptible individuals goes to zero in the case where a so-called low-risk subhabitat is created. In this work, we shall provide further understanding of the impacts of large and small diffusion rates of the susceptible and infected population on the persistence and extinction of the disease, which leads us to determine the asymptotic behaviors of the endemic equilibrium when the diffusion rate of either the susceptible or infected population approaches to infinity or zero in the remaining cases. Consequently, our results reveal that, in order to eliminate the infected population at least in low-risk area, it is necessary that one will have to create a low-risk subhabitat and reduce at least one of the diffusion rates to zero. In this case, our results also show that different strategies of controlling the diffusion rates of individuals may lead to very different spatial distributions of the population; moreover, once the spatial environment is modified to include a low-risk subhabitat, the optimal strategy of eradicating the epidemic disease is to restrict the diffusion rate of the susceptible individuals rather than that of the infected ones.     

Attractors for nonlinear reaction-diffusion systems in unbounded domains via the method of short trajectories

We consider a nonlinear reaction-diffusion equation on the whole space Rd. We prove the well-posedness of the corresponding Cauchy problem in a general functional setting, namely, when the initial datum is uniformly locally bounded in L² only. Then we adapt the short trajectory method to establish the existence of the global attractor and, if d?3, we find an upper bound of its Kolmogorov's ε-entropy.     

Positive solutions to logistic type equations with harvesting

We use comparison principles, variational arguments and a truncation method to obtain positive solutions to logistic type equations with harvesting both in RN and in a bounded domain Ω⊂RN, with N?3, when the carrying capacity of the environment is not constant. By relaxing the growth assumption on the coefficients of the differential equation we derive a new equation which is easily solved. The solution of this new equation is then used to produce a positive solution of our original problem.     

Two-locus clines maintained by diffusion and recombination in a heterogeneous environment

We study existence and stability of stationary solutions of a system of semilinear parabolic partial differential equations that occurs in population genetics. It describes the evolution of gamete frequencies in a geographically structured population of migrating individuals in a bounded habitat. Fitness of individuals is determined additively by two recombining, diallelic genetic loci that are subject to spatially varying selection. Migration is modeled by diffusion. Of most interest are spatially non-constant stationary solutions, so-called clines. In a two-locus cline all four gametes are present in the population, i.e., it is an internal stationary solution. We provide conditions for existence and linear stability of a two-locus cline if recombination is either sufficiently weak or sufficiently strong relative to selection and diffusion. For strong recombination, we also prove uniqueness and global asymptotic stability. For arbitrary recombination, we determine the stability properties of the monomorphic equilibria, which represent fixation of a single gamete.     

Global well-posedness for nonlocal fractional Keller-Segel systems in critical Besov spaces

In this paper, we study Keller-Segel systems with fractional diffusion and a nonlocal term. We establish the global existence, uniqueness and stability of solutions for systems with small initial data in critical Besov spaces. Our main tools are the L^p−L^q estimates for in Besov spaces and the perturbation of linearization.     

Spatial dynamics of a nonlocal and time-delayed reaction-diffusion system

In this paper, we investigate the spatial dynamics of a nonlocal and time-delayed reaction-diffusion system, which is motivated by an age-structured population model with distributed maturation delay. The spreading speed c^*, the existence of traveling waves with the wave speed c?c^*, and the nonexistence of traveling waves with c<c^* are obtained. It turns out that the spreading speed coincides with the minimal wave speed for monotone traveling waves.