Contact and voter processes on the infinite percolation cluster as models of host-symbiont interactions (Q640054)

The authors study the relationships between a host species, larger in size, and either a single or multiple symbiont species, smaller in size, that reproduce much faster and in greater number. This motivates to consider a static host environment modeled by the infinite percolation cluster of supercritical site percolation on which the symbionts will evolve. In the single-species model, each population of parasites on a single individual host will evolve according to the logistic growth process, and the entire population according to a mixture of this model and its spatial analog, the contact process. Conditions ensuring final death or survival of the global population of parasites are obtained in terms of reproduction rate, transmission rate, maximum number of symbionts per host and site percolation parameter. In the multispecies model, the infracommunity on single hosts evolves according to the Moran model and the entire component community according to a mixture of this model and its spatial analog, the voter model. Here, the long-time behavior of the component community depends on the spatial dimension: the community clusters in two dimensions whereas the symbiont species may coexist in higher dimensions.