Age specific coexistence in two species competition英文文献.pdfVIP

Age-Specific Coexistence in Two-Species Competition K. GOPALSAMY School of Muthemutits, Flinders University. Bedford Pork, South Austruliu 5042 Austruliu Received IO September 1981; revised 3 Much 1982 ABSTRACT Sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence and linear stability of stationary age distributions in a two-species competition model with age-dependent mortality and fertility functions. 1. INTRODUCTION Age is an important and general property of biological organisms. The total number is a coarse description of any population. A subdivision of a population into age classes (age structure) provides a more informative description. When one investigates a population of plants or animals at any given instant of time, it will be found that they consist of individuals born over a range of past times; furthermore, the fertilities and the probabilities of survival depend on the ages of individuals. Thus a full ecological description of the state of populations should take into account the age structure of the population, described by the proportions of individuals in different age classes. We will formulate an age specific two-species competition model system as follows. Let P,(l) and P2(t) denote the total population sizes (or biomasses) at time t 2 0 of two interacting species living in a common habitat and competing for the same pool of resources. The competition for resources will be implicit in our model, similar to that