Persistence in ecological models of competition for a single resource (Q1764183)

The authors consider the system \[ \dot{x}_i=\phi_i(x_i,u)\equiv x_if_i(x_i,u),\;\;i=1,\dots,n, \tag{1} \] with a scalar input \(u\). The main result of the paper presents sufficient conditions under which the closed loop system \(\dot{x}_i=\phi_i(x_i,-g(t,x))\) possesses a globally asymptotically stable nonnegative equilibrium. In theoretical ecology, systems (1) can describe the behaviour of \(n\) different systems in the presence of a common resource \(u\). The result is applied to a model of single-nutrient competition in the chemostat \[ \dot{s}=-\sum\limits_{j=1}^n\frac{h_j(s,x_j)}{k_j}x_j+D(s_{in}-s),\;\;\dot{x}_i=x_i(h_i(s,x_i)-D),\;\;i=1,\dots,n, \] where \(s\) and \(x_i\) are, respectively, the substrate and the \(i\)th micro-organism concentrations; \(D\) is the dilution rate of the input flow of feed concentration \(s_{in}\). In the basic chemostat theory (see, for instance, [\textit{H .L. Smith} and \textit{P. Waltman}, The theory of the chemostat. Dynamics of microbial competition. Cambridge Studies in Mathematical Biology. 13. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. (1995; Zbl 0860.92031)]), the growth function \(h_i\) is a function of \(s\) only. The authors show that an intra-specific dependency of the growth functions is enough to explain a stable persistence of several species.