# Accelerating invasions along an environmental gradient

## TL;DR

This paper studies how populations with traits and spatial structure spread faster along environmental gradients, showing that initial trait distributions influence invasion speed and survival outcomes.

## Contribution

It introduces a model combining space, traits, and environmental gradients, demonstrating acceleration in invasion speeds under heavy tail initial conditions.

## Key findings

- Population propagation accelerates along environmental gradients.
- Initial heavy tail orientation critically affects invasion speed.
- Precise estimates of population front locations are derived.

## Abstract

We consider a population structured by a space variable and a phenotypical trait, submitted to dispersion, mutations, growth and nonlocal competition. This population is facing an environmental gradient: the optimal trait for survival depends linearly on the spatial variable. The survival or extinction depends on the sign of an underlying principal eigenvalue. We investigate the survival case when the initial data satisfies a so-called heavy tail condition in the space-trait plane. Under these assumptions, we show that the solution propagates in the favorable direction of survival by accelerating. We derive some precise estimates on the location of the level sets corresponding to the total population in the space variable, regardless of their traits. Our analysis also reveals that the orientation of the initial heavy tail is of crucial importance.