Population persistence in river networks

Abstract

Organisms inhabiting river systems contend with downstream biased flow in a complex tree-like network. Differential equation models are often used to study population persistence, thus suggesting resolutions of the 'drift paradox', by considering the dependence of persistence on such variables as advection rate, dispersal characteristics, and domain size. Most previous models that explicitly considered network geometry artificially discretized river habitat into distinct patches. With the recent exception of Ramirez (J Math Biol 65:919-942, 2012), partial differential equation models have largely ignored the global geometry of river systems and the effects of tributary junctions by using intervals to describe the spatial domain. Taking advantage of recent developments in the analysis of eigenvalue problems on quantum graphs, we use a reaction-diffusion-advection equation on a metric tree graph to analyze persistence of a single population in terms of dispersal parameters and network geometry. The metric graph represents a continuous network where edges represent actual domain rather than connections among patches. Here, network geometry usually has a significant impact on persistence, and occasionally leads to dramatically altered predictions. This work ranges over such themes as model definition, reduction to a diffusion equation with the associated model features, numerical and analytical studies in radially symmetric geometries, and theoretical results for general domains. Notable in the model assumptions is that the zero-flux interior junction conditions are not restricted to conservation of hydrological discharge.