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.     

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.     

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.     

Realization of prescribed patterns in the competition model

We demonstrate that for any prescribed set of finitely many disjoint closed subdomains D₁,…,D_m of a given spatial domain Ω in R^N, if d₁,d₂,a₁,a₂,c,d,e are positive continuous functions on Ω and b(x) is identically zero on D?D₁∪?∪D_m and positive in the rest of Ω, then for suitable choices of the parameters λ, μ and all small ε>0, the competition model

     

Existence and uniqueness of traveling waves for non-monotone integral equations with applications

A class of integral equations without monotonicity is investigated. It is shown that there is a spreading speed c^∗>0 for such an integral equation, and that its limiting integral equation admits a unique traveling wave (up to translation) with speed c?c^∗ and no traveling wave with c<c^∗. These results are also applied to some nonlocal reaction-diffusion population models.     

Existence of fast positive wavefronts for a non-local delayed reaction-diffusion equation

We establish the existence of a continuous family of fast positive wavefronts u(t,x)=?(x+ct), ?(−∞)=0, ?(+∞)=κ, for the non-local delayed reaction-diffusion equation . Here 0 and κ>0 are fixed points of g∈C²(R₊,R₊) and the non-negative K is such that is finite for every real λ. We also prove that the fast wavefronts are non-monotone if .     

Traveling wavefronts for time-delayed reaction-diffusion equation: (I) Local nonlinearity

In this paper, we study a class of time-delayed reaction-diffusion equation with local nonlinearity for the birth rate. For all wavefronts with the speed c>c_∗, where c_∗>0 is the critical wave speed, we prove that these wavefronts are asymptotically stable, when the initial perturbation around the traveling waves decays exponentially as x→−∞, but the initial perturbation can be arbitrarily large in other locations. This essentially improves the stability results obtained by Mei, So, Li and Shen [M. Mei, J.W.-H. So, M.Y. Li, S.S.P. Shen, Asymptotic stability of traveling waves for the Nicholson's blowflies equation with diffusion, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh Sect. A 134 (2004) 579-594] for the speed with small initial perturbation and by Lin and Mei [C.-K. Lin, M. Mei, On travelling wavefronts of the Nicholson's blowflies equations with diffusion, submitted for publication] for c>c_∗ with sufficiently small delay time r≈0. The approach adopted in this paper is the technical weighted energy method used in [M. Mei, J.W.-H. So, M.Y. Li, S.S.P. Shen, Asymptotic stability of traveling waves for the Nicholson's blowflies equation with diffusion, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh Sect. A 134 (2004) 579-594], but inspired by Gourley [S.A. Gourley, Linear stability of travelling fronts in an age-structured reaction-diffusion population model, Quart. J. Mech. Appl. Math. 58 (2005) 257-268] and based on the property of the critical wavefronts, the weight function is carefully selected and it plays a key role in proving the stability for any c>c_∗ and for an arbitrary time-delay r>0.     

Measure-valued solutions for a hierarchically size-structured population

We present a hierarchically size-structured population model with growth, mortality and reproduction rates which depend on a function of the population density (environment). We present an example to show that if the growth rate is not always a decreasing function of the environment (e.g., a growth which exhibits the Allee effect) the emergence of a singular solution which contains a Dirac delta mass component is possible, even if the vital rates of the individual and the initial data are smooth functions. Therefore, we study the existence of measure-valued solutions. Our approach is based on the vanishing viscosity method.     

The 2D Boussinesq equations with vertical viscosity and vertical diffusivity

This paper aims at the global regularity of classical solutions to the 2D Boussinesq equations with vertical dissipation and vertical thermal diffusion. We prove that the Lr-norm of the vertical velocity v for any 1<r<∞ is globally bounded and that the L^∞-norm of v controls any possible breakdown of classical solutions. In addition, we show that an extra thermal diffusion given by the fractional Laplace δ(−Δ) for δ>0 would guarantee the global regularity of classical solutions.     

On convergence of solutions to equilibria for quasilinear parabolic problems

We show convergence of solutions to equilibria for quasilinear parabolic evolution equations in situations where the set of equilibria is non-discrete, but forms a finite-dimensional C¹-manifold which is normally hyperbolic. Our results do not depend on the presence of an appropriate Lyapunov functional as in the ?ojasiewicz-Simon approach, but are of local nature.     

The diffusive logistic model with a free boundary in heterogeneous environment

In this paper, we study the population dynamics of an invasive species in heterogeneous environment which is modeled by a diffusive logistic equation with free boundary condition. To understand the effect of the dispersal rate D and the parameter μ (the ratio of the expansion speed of the free boundary and the population gradient at the expanding front) on the dynamics of this model, we divide the heterogeneous environment into two cases: strong heterogeneous environment and weak heterogeneous environment. By choosing D and μ as variable parameters, we derive sufficient conditions for species spreading (resp. vanishing) in the strong heterogeneous environment; while in the weak heterogeneous environment, we obtain sharp criteria for the spreading and vanishing. Moreover, when spreading happens, we give an estimate for the asymptotic spreading speed of the free boundary. These theoretical results may have important implications for prediction and prevention of biological invasions.     

Relaxation limit for a symmetrically hyperbolic system

In this paper, we apply the invariant region theory to get an a prioriL^∞ estimate of the relaxation approximated solutions to the Cauchy problem of a symmetrically hyperbolic system with stiff relaxation and dominant diffusion, and then obtain that the relaxation approximated solutions converge almost everywhere to the equilibrium state of the symmetrical system with the aid of the compactness framework about the scalar equation.     

Compactness of weak solutions to the three-dimensional compressible magnetohydrodynamic equations

The compactness of weak solutions to the magnetohydrodynamic equations for the viscous, compressible, heat conducting fluids is considered in both the three-dimensional space R³ and the three-dimensional periodic domains. The viscosities, the heat conductivity as well as the magnetic coefficient are allowed to depend on the density, and may vanish on the vacuum. This paper provides a different idea from [X. Hu, D. Wang, Global solutions to the three-dimensional full compressible magnetohydrodynamic flows, Comm. Math. Phys. (2008), in press] to show the compactness of solutions of viscous, compressible, heat conducting magnetohydrodynamic flows, derives a new entropy identity, and shows that the limit of a sequence of weak solutions is still a weak solution to the compressible magnetohydrodynamic equations.