Forced waves of a three species predator-prey system with a pair of weak-strong competing preys in a shifting environment

TL;DR

This paper studies forced wave solutions in a three-species predator-prey reaction-diffusion model with strong-weak prey competition in a shifting environment, analyzing species survival under climate change scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a new analysis of forced wave solutions in a complex three-species model with climate shift effects, highlighting conditions for species survival.

Findings

Identification of conditions for species persistence under climate shift

Analysis of different forced wave types depending on species origin

Criteria for climate shift speed affecting species survival

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate so-called forced wave solutions of a three components reaction-diffusion system from population dynamics. Our system involves three species that are respectively two competing preys and one predator; moreover, the competition between both preys is strong, i.e. in the absence of the predator, one prey is driven to extinction and the other survives. Furthermore, our problem includes a spatio-temporal heterogeneity in a moving variable that typically stands as a model for climate shift. In this context, forced waves are special stationary solutions which are expected to describe the large-time behavior of solutions, and in particular to provide criteria on the climate shift speed to allow survival of either of the three species. We will consider several types of forced waves to deal with various situations depending on which species are indigenous and which species are aboriginal.