Competitive Brownian and Levy walkers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different diffusion mechanisms and interaction ranges influence population spatial patterns, clustering, and family mixing in systems with birth, death, and competition, highlighting differences between Gaussian and Levy flights.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of Gaussian and Levy diffusion in population dynamics with various interaction ranges, revealing their effects on spatial clustering and family mixing.

Findings

Global interactions lead to single or few clusters.

Levy flights produce long-tailed cluster properties.

Finite-range interactions induce periodic spatial patterns.

Abstract

Population dynamics of individuals undergoing birth and death and diffusing by short or long ranged twodimensional spatial excursions (Gaussian jumps or L\'{e}vy flights) is studied. Competitive interactions are considered in a global case, in which birth and death rates are influenced by all individuals in the system, and in a nonlocal but finite-range case in which interaction affects individuals in a neighborhood (we also address the noninteracting case). In the global case one single or few-cluster configurations are achieved with the spatial distribution of the bugs tied to the type of diffusion. In the L\'{e}vy case long tails appear for some properties characterizing the shape and dynamics of clusters. Under non-local finite-range interactions periodic patterns appear with periodicity set by the interaction range. This length acts as a cut-off limiting the influence of the long L\'{e}vy jumps, so that spatial configurations under the two types of diffusion become more similar. By dividing initially everyone into different families and following their descent it is possible to show that mixing of families and their competition is greatly influenced by the spatial dynamics.