Article ID: | iaor20113600 |
Volume: | 217 |
Issue: | 16 |
Start Page Number: | 6934 |
End Page Number: | 6949 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2011 |
Journal: | Applied Mathematics and Computation |
Authors: | Guo Haojie, Zheng Sining |
Keywords: | competition, diffusion models |
This paper studies a un‐stirred chemostat with two species competing for two growth‐limiting, non‐reproducing resources. We determine the conditions for positive steady states of the two species, and then consider the global attractors of the model. In addition, we obtain the conditions under which the two populations uniformly strongly persist or go to extinction. Since the diffusion mechanism with homogeneous boundary conditions inhibits the growth of the organism species, it can be understood that the coexistence will be ensured by proportionally smaller diffusions for the two species. In particular, it is found that both instability and bi‐stability subcases of the two semitrivial steady states are included in the coexistence region. The two populations will go to extinction when both possess large diffusion rates. If just one of them spreads faster with the other one diffusing slower, then the related semitrivial steady state will be globally attracting. The techniques used for the above results consist of the degree theory, the semigroup theory, and the maximum principle.