The effect of an unfavorable region on the invasion process of a species

TL;DR

This paper rigorously analyzes how the width of an unfavorable region affects species invasion in a reaction-diffusion model, revealing a critical threshold that determines whether the species spreads, residues, or reaches a transition state.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical framework to determine the critical width of an unfavorable region influencing species invasion dynamics.

Findings

Existence of a critical width $L^*$ for invasion success

Different invasion outcomes depending on initial population size

Identification of a trichotomy in species behavior based on region width and initial data

Abstract

To model a propagating phenomena through the environment with an unfavorable region, we consider a reaction diffusion equation with negative growth rate in the unfavorable region and bistable reaction outside of it. We study rigorously the influence of $L$, the width of the unfavorable region, on the propagation of solutions. It turns out that there exists a critical value $L^*$ depending only on the reaction term such that, when $L<L^*$, spreading happens for any solution in the sense that it passes through the unfavorable region successfully and establish with minor defect in the region; when $L=L^*$, spreading happens only for a species with large initial population, while residue happens for a population with small initial data, in the sense that the solution converges to a small steady state; when $L>L^*$ we have a trichotomy result: spreading/residue happens for a species with large/small initial population, but, for a species with medium-sized initial data, it can not pass through the region either and converges to a transition steady state.