Persistence in the chemostat (Q751573)

The chemostat is a laboratory apparatus where the growth medium for a microorganism is continually added at a fixed rate. This paper studies sufficient conditions for persistence in chemostat models for interaction of a limiting substrate and two populations, and for two limiting complementary substrates and a single population. Persistence in the first case is obtained if the input concentration of the nutrient is higher than the product of the Michaelis-Menten constant (for the i th species) times the ratio of the death rate to the intrinsic rate of natural increase. The results of \textit{H. I. Freedman} and \textit{P. Waltman} [ibid. 68, 213- 231 (1984; Zbl 0534.92026)] for three interacting predator-prey populations are extended for the chemostat models for two species and one limiting substrate.