Persistence, permanence and global stability for an \(n\)-dimensional Nicholson system (Q481267)

The authors consider a model system for population dynamics over a patch environment. The local dynamics in each patch is governed by the Nicholson equations which is a delay differential equation with the delay accounting for the maturation time, and the patches are connected through linear dispersion of the population. It is shown that if the spectral bound of the community matrix is non-positive, then the population goes to extinction on each patch, and if the bound is positive the population becomes persistent. Explicit uniform lower and upper bounds for the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions are also obtained. In the case of uniform persistence, a unique positive equilibrium is shown to exists; and some sharp conditions are also given under which this positive equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable and these conditions improve some existing ones. While the system is not cooperative, the authors are able to establish several sharp threshold results about the dynamics of the system, even when the community matrix is reducible, in contrast to most works on patch population models in the literature.