Approximating the ideal free distribution via reaction-diffusion-advection equations (Q959836)

The authors consider reaction-diffusion-advection models with nonlinear boundary conditions, which incorporate population growth and diffusion along with directed motion up the fitness gradient. The existence and uniqueness is proved for solutions to such reaction-diffusion-advection equations. By analyzing the behavior of equilibria of the reaction-diffusion-advection equations, the authors show that in temporally constant but spatially varying environments such populations have equilibrium distributions that can approximate those that would be predicted by a version of the ideal free distribution incorporating population dynamics, and a dispersal mechanism based on local information about the environment and population density can approximate the ideal free distribution.