Spreading dynamics for diffusive competition systems in shifting environments

Overview & Synopsis

We study the spreading dynamics for two-species diffusive competition systems in shifting environments caused by climate changes. Our main goal is to derive conditions for extinction and persistence of each species in the case of a strong-weak competition. Depending on the pace of the climate change, but also on whether the strong competitor is faster or slower, we will uncover dramatically different outcomes in the asymptotic behavior of solutions. For instance, it may be that a weak and fast competitor survives while a strong and slow one does not. Furthermore, we find some parameter regime where the outcome depends not only on the climate change speed, but also on both species' resilience to it, and even on the initial populations' distributions. Our results show how strikingly complex the effect of climate change may be on population dynamics as soon as several species are considered.