Wave Blocking Phenomena and Ecological Applications

Abstract

The growing flow of people and goods around the globe has allowed new, non-native species to establish and spread in already fragile ecosystems. The introduction of invasive species can have a detrimental impact on the already established species. Thus, it is important that we understand the mechanisms that facilitate or prevent invasion. Since reaction-diffusion invasion models produce travelling waves we can study invasion by looking at the mechanisms that allow for wave propagation failure, or wave-blocking. In this thesis we consider a perturbed reaction-diffusion model in which the perturbation resides in either the reaction or diffusion term. In doing so we exploit the underlying symmetry of our problem to define a region in the appropriate parameter space that leads to wave blocking. As a demonstrative example we apply our theory to the bistable equation and consider the effects of various perturbations.