| Abstract: |
| Propagation dynamics describing the spread of invasive species are historically studies on static landscapes. Many such species, however, alter the landscape through which they spread in order to improve conditions for their own survival. Such species are referred to as `` ecosystem engineers``. To describe the propagation dynamics for such species, we have to include the interactions between the species and the landscape, which makes the landscape dynamic. We formulate a two-sided free boundary problem for the spread of ecosystem engineers. We study the existence and uniqueness of traveling waves for this system under different assumptions of the population dynamics (monostable or bistable) and different scenarios for the movement condition of the free boundary. We discover a large range of qualitatively different profiles of traveling waves under different parameter regimes. |
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