Open AccessThe impacts of dispersal on the competition outcome of multi-patch competition models
Author(s) -
Ali Mai,
Guo Hua Sun,
Lin Wang
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
mathematical biosciences and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.451
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1551-0018
pISSN - 1547-1063
DOI - 10.3934/mbe.2019134
Subject(s) - biological dispersal , competition (biology) , homogeneous , competition model , instability , coexistence theory , ecology , statistical physics , biology , physics , mechanics , economics , microeconomics , profit (economics) , population , demography , sociology
In this paper, we study a two-species competition model over patchy environments. One species is assumed to disperse randomly between patches with a constant dispersal delay. We show that the dispersal does not affect the stability and instability of the homogeneous coexistence equilibrium in two configurations (fully connected configuration and ring-structured configuration) of an arbitrary number of patches. For the weak competition case, we show that the homogeneous coexistence equilibrium is the unique coexistence equilibrium and both species can coexist. However, for the strong competition case, we show that the homogeneous coexistence equilibrium is unstable, in addition, small dispersal rate can induce multiple coexistence equilibria and the dispersal (including the dispersal rate and the dispersal delay) does have impacts on determining the competition outcome and can induce multi-stability. As a result, transient coexistence of both species can be observed in all patches, and long-term coexistence of both species in some patches, though not in all patches, becomes possible.