Coexistence in an inhomogeneous Environment


  Shlomit Weissman  ,  David A. Kessler  
Department of Physics, Bar Ilan University

Dispersal plays an essential role in population dynamics. The dispersal effect is particularity important when 
the distribution of resources is not uniform in space. Hastings \cite{Hastings} and Dockery, et al. \cite{Dockery}, 
used a simple one dimensional model of two species, identical except for dispersal rate, compete for a spatially 
distributed resource. They proved, solving the reaction-diffusion equations, that the more slowly species drives 
the other species to extinction for any non-uniform distribution of resources that is smooth enough. Kessler and 
sander \cite{kessler&sander}, demonstrated that by formulate the original model differently, in terms of an 
agent-based simulation, over a wide range of parameters got the opposite behavior. That is, the fast species drive 
the slow species to extinction. Expansion of the model to two dimensional lead to a new phenomenon that wasn't 
occur in the one dimensional model: coexistence in part of the parameters.