Propagation dynamics for an age-structured population model in time-space periodic habitat

Abstract

How do environmental heterogeneity influence propagation dynamics of the age-structured invasive species? We investigate this problem by considering a yearly generation invasive species in time-space periodic habitat. Starting from an age-structured population growth law, we formulate a reaction-diffusion model with time-space periodic dispersal, mortality and recruitment. Thanks to the fundamental solution for linear part of the model, we reduce to study the dynamics of a time-space periodic semiflow which is defined by the solution map. By the recent developed dynamical theory in Fang et al. (J Funct Anal 272:4222-4262, 2017), we obtained the spreading speed and its coincidence with the minimal wave speed of time-space periodic traveling waves, as well as the variational characterization of spreading speed in terms of a principal eigenvalue problem. Such results are also proved back to the reaction-diffusion model.