Can a single migrant per generation rescue a dying population?

Abstract: We introduce a population model to test the hypothesis that even a single migrant per generation may rescue a dying population. Let

(c_{k})

be a sequence of real numbers in

(0, 1)

. Let

X_{n}

be a size of the population at time

n g e q 0

. Then,

X_{n + 1} = X_{n} - Y_{n + 1} + 1

, where the conditional distribution of

Y_{n + 1}

given

X_{n} = k

is a binomial random variable with parameters

(k, c (k))

. We assume that

l i m_{k o i n f t y} k c (k) = h o

exists. If

h o < 1

the process is transient with speed

1 - h o

(so yes a single migrant per generation may rescue a dying population!) and if

h o > 1

the process is positive recurrent. In the critical case

h o = 1

the process is recurrent or transient according to how

k c (k)

converges to

1

. When

h o = 0

and under some regularity conditions, the support of the increments is eventually finite.

Cites Work

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