Instability in diffusive ecolocical models with nonlocal delay effects (Q5939798)

The authors consider a reaction-diffusion system with nonlocal delays which is used as a model describing the growth of plankton communities feeding on a limiting nutrient supplied at a constant rate. The system is formed as follows: \[ \partial N/\partial t=d_1\triangle N+D(N^0-N)-aP(t,x)f(N(t,x))+\gamma_1\int\limits_{-\infty }^t\int_{\Omega }F(x,y,t-s)P(s,y) dy ds \] \[ \partial P/\partial t=d_2\triangle P+P \left[-(\gamma +D)+a_1\int_{-\infty }^t\int_{\Omega }G(x,y,t-s)f(N(t,x)) dy ds\right]. \] The unknown functions \(N(t,x)\) and \(P(t,x)\) denote the biomass of nutrient and plankton, respectively, per unit of volume evaluated at the point \(x\) at time \(t\). The initial condition has the form: \(N(\theta ,x)=\Phi (\theta ,x)\), \(P(\theta ,x)=\psi (\theta ,x)\), \(\theta \in (-\infty ,0]\), \(x\in\Omega \), where \(\Phi \) and \(\psi \) are positive continuous functions. The boundary condition is \(\partial N/\partial n=\partial P/\partial n=0\) on \(\partial \Omega \), where \(\partial /\partial n \) represents the outward normal derivative on \(\partial \Omega \). All parameters taking part in the model are positive. Two delays are incorporated into the model. One describes the delayed nutrient recycling process and the other models the delayed growth response of the plankton. Local and bifurcation analyses are carried out. It is shown that Turing-type spatial patterns occur when the diffusion coefficients vary, and temporal or spatial-temporal patterns occur when the delay involved in the growth response changes. Some of the results obtained by Ruan (1998) are generalized as well.