Stability and regularity results for a size-structured population model (Q864679)

Studies of populations with heterogeneity based upon age have been with us for many years. In more recent decades physiological criteria have been adopted as measures of heterogeneity. In the present paper the chosen physiological trait is size. The vital rates - both, growth and death - are functions of both size and population. There is no distinction made between fertile and infertile groups, but it is remarked that this subdivision could be added to the model in the future. The underlying philosophy to this paper, namely that of the role played by size in the population, is thought provoking as in historical as well as modern times bodily size has been noted to increase in human populations. One need only look at the American population in the last century, the Japanese population in the last half-century and current developments in Europe. The paper under review deal solely with population, but one can easily imagine adding further effects to model the interaction of the population with critical environmental factors. All in all this area of investigation appears to have interesting and imaginative possibilities. In this paper the authors describe the dynamics of a size-structured population indwelling a finite domain. The dependent variable is the density of the population and the independent variables are time and size. After some manipulations the governing nonlinear partial differential equation is linearised about a stationary solution. The end result is an abstract first-order ordinary differential equation containing an operator which generates a strongly continuous semigroup of bounded linear operators. Regularity properties of the semigroup are established and the linear stability of stationary solutions investigated. A noteworthy feature is that a number of the results established here for a size-structured population have direct analogues in an age-structured population. The converse is presently not proven.