Competition and Age-Structure

Abstract

The theory of two species competing for the same resources plays an extremely important role in present day ecology, both applied and theoretical. The role played by age structure in competitive interactions has not, however, been investigated to the extent that it has been for predator-prey interactions. The purpose of this work is to provide some insight into the dynamics of competitive interactions with age structure. To make the model simple and tractable we consider a two-species competition model where only one species has age-structure. This is not purely a mathematical simplification but has some biological justification as well. For example, for some populations of birds and lizards competing for insects only the lizards have a significant age-structure (we thank R.M. May who suggested this biological application in a personal conversation). The existence and stability of the equilibria of the general model equation (2.3) is studied as it depends on the inherent net reproductive rate n of the age-structured population.

Research supported by National Scholarship for Study Abroad (1980) from the Government of India.