Criteria for \(C^r\) robust permanence (Q1566846)

Let \(\dot x_i= x_if_i(x)\) \((i= 1,\dots, n)\) be a \(C^r\) vector field that generates a dissipative flow \(\phi\) on the positive cone of \(\mathbb{R}^n\). \(\phi\) is called permanent if the boundary of the positive cone is repelling. \(\phi\) is called \(C^r\) robustly permanent if \(\phi\) remains permanent for sufficiently small \(C^r\) perturbations of the vector field. The author develops necessary and sufficient conditions for \(C^r\) robust permanence involving the average per-capita growth rates \(\int f_id\mu\) with respect to invariant measures \(\mu\). The necessary condition requires that the boundary of the positive cone be weakly unsaturated, which means that \(\inf_\mu\max_i \int f_id\mu> 0\), where the infimum is taken over ergodic measure with compact support in the boundary of the positive cone. This result generalizes the fact that each boundary equilibrium of a robustly permanent system must be unsaturated. The sufficient condition is that boundary flow admits a Morse decomposition \(\{M_1,\dots, M_k\}\) such that every \(M_j\) is unsaturated, which means that \(\min_\mu \max_i f_id\mu> 0\) where the minimum is taken over invariant measures with support in \(M_j\). As applications, the author provides a sufficient condition for \(C^r\) robust permanence of Lotka-Volterra models and a topological characterization of \(C^r\) robust permanence for food chain models.