Metapopulation models with anti-symmetric Lotka–Volterra systems

Abstract

We consider different anti-symmetric Lotka–Volterra systems governing the pairwise interactions among the same n species inhabiting m spatially discrete habitat patches, with each patch having infinitely many equilibria. In the absence of inter-patch species migration, the species densities in each isolated patch evolve in periodic orbits. A central idea of this work is to design a control action to make the trajectories of the system asymptotically converge to a desired coexistence equilibrium among the infinitely many equilibrium points. We propose a scheme to simultaneously control different anti-symmetric Lotka–Volterra systems in multiple habitat patches by designing a metapopulation model. By introducing a suitable inter-patch migration of species, we prove that the trajectories of the resulting metapopulation model are effectively asymptotically converging to the desired coexistence equilibrium. The stability of the coexistence equilibrium is proved using Lyapunov methods coupled with LaSalle's invariance principle.

Keywords

• Conservative Lotka–Volterra systems
• control design
• ecological networks
• detailed balanced reaction networks
• Lyapunov methods
• 34D20