No Arabic abstract
The aim of this paper is to tackle part of the program set by Diekmann et al. in their seminal paper Diekmann et al. (2001). We quote It remains to investigate whether, and in what sense, the nonlinear determin-istic model formulation is the limit of a stochastic model for initial population size tending to infinity We set a precise and general framework for a stochastic individual based model : it is a piecewise deterministic Markov process defined on the set of finite measures. We then establish a law of large numbers under conditions easy to verify. Finally we show how this applies to old and new examples.
In the present article, we investigate the effects of dormancy on an abstract population genetic level. We first provide a short review of seed bank models in population genetics, and the role of dormancy for the interplay of evolutionary forces in general, before we discuss two recent paradigmatic models, referring to spontaneous resp. simultaneous switching of individuals between the active and the dormant state. We show that both mechanisms give rise to non-trivial mathematical objects, namely the (continuous) seed bank diffusion and the seed bank diffusion with jumps, as well as their dual processes, the seed bank coalescent and the seed bank coalescent with simultaneous switching.
In this paper I will review twenty years of work on the question: When is there coexistence in stochastic spatial models? The answer, announced in Durrett and Levin [Theor. Pop. Biol. 46 (1994) 363--394], and that we explain in this paper is that this can be determined by examining the mean-field ODE. There are a number of rigorous results in support of this picture, but we will state nine challenging and important open problems, most of which date from the 1990s.
Here, we consider an SIS epidemic model where the individuals are distributed on several distinct patches. We construct a stochastic model and then prove that it converges to a deterministic model as the total population size tends to infinity. Furthermore, we show the existence and the global stability of a unique endemic equilibrium provided that the migration rates of susceptible and infectious individuals are equal. Finally, we compare the equilibra with those of the homogeneous model, and with those of isolated patches.
In this article, we consider time-changed models of population evolution $mathcal{X}^f(t)=mathcal{X}(H^f(t))$, where $mathcal{X}$ is a counting process and $H^f$ is a subordinator with Laplace exponent $f$. In the case $mathcal{X}$ is a pure birth process, we study the form of the distribution, the intertimes between successive jumps and the condition of explosion (also in the case of killed subordinators). We also investigate the case where $mathcal{X}$ represents a death process (linear or sublinear) and study the extinction probabilities as a function of the initial population size $n_0$. Finally, the subordinated linear birth-death process is considered. A special attention is devoted to the case where birth and death rates coincide; the sojourn times are also analysed.
Classical ecological theory predicts that environmental stochasticity increases extinction risk by reducing the average per-capita growth rate of populations. To understand the interactive effects of environmental stochasticity, spatial heterogeneity, and dispersal on population growth, we study the following model for population abundances in $n$ patches: the conditional law of $X_{t+dt}$ given $X_t=x$ is such that when $dt$ is small the conditional mean of $X_{t+dt}^i-X_t^i$ is approximately $[x^imu_i+sum_j(x^j D_{ji}-x^i D_{ij})]dt$, where $X_t^i$ and $mu_i$ are the abundance and per capita growth rate in the $i$-th patch respectivly, and $D_{ij}$ is the dispersal rate from the $i$-th to the $j$-th patch, and the conditional covariance of $X_{t+dt}^i-X_t^i$ and $X_{t+dt}^j-X_t^j$ is approximately $x^i x^j sigma_{ij}dt$. We show for such a spatially extended population that if $S_t=(X_t^1+...+X_t^n)$ is the total population abundance, then $Y_t=X_t/S_t$, the vector of patch proportions, converges in law to a random vector $Y_infty$ as $ttoinfty$, and the stochastic growth rate $lim_{ttoinfty}t^{-1}log S_t$ equals the space-time average per-capita growth rate $sum_imu_iE[Y_infty^i]$ experienced by the population minus half of the space-time average temporal variation $E[sum_{i,j}sigma_{ij}Y_infty^i Y_infty^j]$ experienced by the population. We derive analytic results for the law of $Y_infty$, find which choice of the dispersal mechanism $D$ produces an optimal stochastic growth rate for a freely dispersing population, and investigate the effect on the stochastic growth rate of constraints on dispersal rates. Our results provide fundamental insights into ideal free movement in the face of uncertainty, the persistence of coupled sink populations, the evolution of dispersal rates, and the single large or several small (SLOSS) debate in conservation biology.