The asymptotic speed of spread and traveling waves for a vector disease model (Q854727)

The authors study a host-vector model for a disease without immunity in which the current density of infections is related to the number of infectious hosts at earlier times. This model takes form of the following time-delayed integro-differential equation \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}(t,x) = d\Delta u(t,x) -au(t,x) + b(1-u(t,x))\int_{-\infty}^{t}\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} F(t-s,x-y)u(s,y)\,dy\,ds,\tag{1} \] where \(u(t,x)\) is normalized spatial density of infectious host at time \(t\) and point \(x\) of the spatial habitat \(\mathbb{R}\), \(d\) is the diffusion constant, \(a\) is the cure/recovery rate of the infected host, \(b\) is the host-vector contact rate and \(F\) is a positive convolution kernel. The authors combine the comparison method for monotone semiflows and the finite-time delay approximation to prove the existence of asymptotic speed \(c^*\) of the disease spread for solutions with compactly supported initial condition. Next they show that \(c^*\) coincides with the minimum wave speed for monotone traveling waves for (1).