A fluid approach to total-progeny-dependent birth-and-death processes

Abstract

We introduce a class of branching processes in which the reproduction or lifetime distribution at a given time depends on the total cumulative number of individuals who have been born in the population until that time. We focus on a continuous-time version of these processes, called total-progeny-dependent birth-and-death processes, and study some of their properties through the analysis of their deterministic (fluid) approximation. These properties include the maximum population size, the total progeny size at extinction, the time to reach the maximum population size, and the time until extinction. As the fluid approximation does not allow us to determine the time until extinction directly, we propose several methods to complement this approach. We also use the deterministic approach to study the behavior of the processes as we increase the magnitude of the individual’s birth rate.