Persistence and extinction in continuous age-structured population models (Q1119514)

The author treats the nonlinear age-structured population problem \[ (\partial /\partial a)\rho (a,t)+(\partial /\partial t)\rho (a,t)=D(a,t,P(t))\rho (a,t), \] \[ \rho (0,t)=\int^{\infty}_{0}n(a,t)\rho (a,t)da,\quad \rho (a,0)=\Phi (a), \] where P(t) is the total population \(\int^{\infty}_{0}\rho (a,t)da\). It is assumed that the mortality function D has the form \(D=c(t)+\mu (a)+f(P(t))\) and the fertility function n has the form \(n=b(t)\beta (a).\) It is first proved that a unique solution exists for all times. Comparison techniques are then employed to establish sufficient conditions for the persistence (lim \(inf_{t\to \infty}\rho (a,t)>0)\) or extinction \((\lim_{t\to \infty}\rho (a,t)=0)\) of the population. The results are applicable to an age-structured population in a fluctuating environment in which crowding affects population mortality.