Competition for one resource with internal storage and inhibitor in an unstirred chemostat (Q2287315)

This article combines the model of internal storage and the model of a chemostat with inhibitors, and obtains a new model of two competing species for one nutrient with internal storage and an inhibitor. The main assumption is that one species devotes part of its resource to the production of an inhibitor, which reduces the growth rate of its competitor, but does not reduce its own growth rate. Compared to the classic chemostat model, there are three different points. Firstly, the growth of species depends not only on external, but also on accumulated nutrients. Many experiments show that such a model is more consistent with reality. Secondly, instead of specific forms of growth and absorption functions in the system, some basic assumptions about these functions are simply made. Then this approach is suitable for a system with common response functions that satisfy basic assumptions. Thirdly, due to the consideration of the internal storage, a singularity arises, which invalidates the usual linearization method. To overcome the singularity, nonlinear eigenvalue problems are introduced. Unlike the linear eigenvalue problem, the main eigenvalue of the nonlinear problem must correspond to the eigenfunction belonging to a special cone. This is a significant difference compared to previous studies. The main result of the article shows that the system is uniformly stable and at least one equilibrium of coexistence exists. A condition is presented which ensures the existence of two semi-trivial stationary solutions and the instability of the trivial stationary solution. To show that the system has constant stability, a generalized distance function is defined. In combination with the existence of a global attractor, one can conclude that the system has at least one positive stationary solution.