Partial differential equation models for invasive species spread in the presence of spatial heterogeneity

TL;DR

This paper extends PDE models for invasive species spread to include spatial heterogeneity, showing that such variation influences invasion rates and patterns, validated by simulations matching real-world data.

Contribution

Introduces a spatially explicit PDE model for invasive species spread that accounts for heterogeneity and provides a method to extract key invasion metrics from simulations.

Findings

Spatial heterogeneity does not alter the overall invasion pattern significantly.

Distributional assumptions impact the invasion spread rate.

Simulations align with observed invasion patterns in grassland ecosystems.

Abstract

Models of invasive species spread often assume that landscapes are spatially homogeneous; thus simplifying analysis but potentially reducing accuracy. We extend a recently developed partial differential equation model for invasive conifer spread to account for spatial heterogeneity in parameter values and introduce a method to obtain key outputs (e.g. spread rates) from computational simulations. Simulations produce patterns of spatial spread remarkably similar to observed patterns in grassland ecosystems invaded by exotic conifers, validating our spatially explicit strategy. We find that incorporating spatial variation in different parameters does not significantly affect the evolution of invasions (which are characterised by a long quiescent period followed by rapid evolution towards to a constant rate of invasion) but that distributional assumptions can have a significant impact on the spread rate of invasions. Our work demonstrates that spatial variation in site-suitability or other parameters can have a significant impact on invasions