Extinction and uniform persistence in a microbial food web with mycoloop: limiting behavior of a population model with parasitic fungi

Abstract

It is recently known that parasites provide a better picture of an ecosystem, gaining attention in theoretical ecology. Parasitic fungi belong to a food chain between zooplankton and inedible phytoplankton, called mycoloop. We consider a chemostat model that incorporates a single mycoloop, and analyze the limiting behavior of solutions, adding to previous work on steady-state analysis. By way of persistence theory, we establish that a given species survives depending on the food web configuration and the nutrient level. Moreover, we conclude that the model predicts coexistence under bounded nutrient levels.

Keywords

• uniform persistence
• local and global stability
• chemostat
• mycoloop
• phytoplankton
• zooplankton
• parasitic fungi