| Abstract: |
| The effect of dispersal of organisms among different habitats on survival and growth of populations is an important issue in ecological research. Dispersal-induced growth (DIG), also known as the inflationary effect, is
a surprising phenomenon which has been identified by theoretical ecologists using mathematical models, and has also been experimentally confirmed. DIG occurs when populations of a species inhabiting different sites with growth rates which fluctuate in time, and with dispersal among them, are able to persist and grow, despite the fact that each site is of such a low quality that it would not be able to sustain a population in the absence of dispersal. The work to be presented offers a mathematical analysis of the DIG phenomenon, with the aim of identifying the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs, in the case of periodic (seasonal) variation of growth rates. The analysis relies on the study of periodic linear dynamics systems (Floquet theory), taking advantage of recent results of Liu, Lou, and Song on the principal eigenvalue associated with time-periodic patch models. |
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