UBC Math Bio Seminar: Fanze Kong

The strong Allee effect plays an important role on the evolution of population in ecological systems. One important concept is the Allee threshold that determines the persistence or extinction of the population in a long time. In general, a small initial population size is harmful to the survival of a species since when the initial data is below the Allee threshold, the population tends to extinction, rather than persistence. Another interesting feature of population evolution is that a species whose movement strategy follows a conditional dispersal strategy is more likely to persist. To study the interaction between Allee effect and the biased movement strategy, we mainly consider the pattern formation and local dynamics for a class of single species population models that is subject to the strong Allee effect. We first rigorously show the existence of multiple localized solutions when the directed movement is strong enough. Next, the spectrum analysis of the associated linear eigenvalue problem is established and used to investigate the stability properties of these interior spikes. This analysis proves that there exist not only unstable but also linear stable steady states. Finally, we extend results of the single equation to coupled systems for two interacting species, each with different advective terms, and competing for the same resources. We also construct several non-constant steady states and analyze their stability.

This is a work in progress talk by a local graduate student.