A West Nile virus nonlocal model with free boundaries and seasonal succession

The paper deals with a West Nile virus (WNv) model, in which the nonlocal diffusion characterizes the long-range movement of birds and mosquitoes, the free boundaries describe their spreading fronts, and the seasonal succession accounts for the effect of the warm and cold seasons. The well-posedness of the mathematical model is established, and its long-term dynamical behaviours, which depend upon the generalized eigenvalues of the corresponding linearized differential operator, are investigated. For both spatially independent and nonlocal WNv models with seasonal successions, the generalized eigenvalues are studied and applied to determine whether the spreading or vanishing occurs. Our results extend those for the case with nonlocal diffusion but no free boundary and those for the case with free boundary but local diffusion, respectively. The generalized eigenvalues reveal that there exists positive correlation between the duration of the warm season and the risk of infection. Moreover, the initial infection length, the initial infection scale and the spreading ability to new areas all play important roles for the long time behaviors of the time dependent solutions.

On the modelling of spatially heterogeneous nonlocal diffusion: deciding factors and preferential position of individuals

We develop general heterogeneous nonlocal diffusion models and investigate their connection to local diffusion models by taking a singular limit of focusing kernels. We reveal the link between the two groups of diffusion equations which include both spatial heterogeneity and anisotropy. In particular, we introduce the notion of deciding factors which single out a nonlocal diffusion model and typically consist of the total jump rate and the average jump length. In this framework, we also discuss the dependence of the profile of the steady state solutions on these deciding factors, thus shedding light on the preferential position of individuals.

Mathematical analysis on an age-structured SIS epidemic model with nonlocal diffusion

In this paper we propose an age-structured susceptible-infectious-susceptible epidemic model with nonlocal (convolution) diffusion to describe the geographic spread of infectious diseases via long-distance travel. We analyze the well-posedness of the model, investigate the existence and uniqueness of the nontrivial steady state corresponding to an endemic state, and study the local and global stability of this nontrivial steady state. Moreover, we discuss the asymptotic properties of the principal eigenvalue and nontrivial steady state with respect to the nonlocal diffusion rate. The analysis is carried out by using the theory of semigroups and the method of monotone and positive operators. The spectral radius of a positive linear operator associated to the solution flow of the model is identified as a threshold.

Age-Structured Population Dynamics with Nonlocal Diffusion

Random diffusive age-structured population models have been studied by many researchers. Though nonlocal diffusion processes are more applicable to many biological and physical problems compared with random diffusion processes, there are very few theoretical results on age-structured population models with nonlocal diffusion. In this paper our objective is to develop basic theory for age-structured population dynamics with nonlocal diffusion. In particular, we study the semigroup of linear operators associated to an age-structured model with nonlocal diffusion and use the spectral properties of its infinitesimal generator to determine the stability of the zero steady state. It is shown that (i) the structure of the semigroup for the age-structured model with nonlocal diffusion is essentially determined by that of the semigroups for the age-structured model without diffusion and the nonlocal operator when both birth and death rates are independent of spatial variables; (ii) the asymptotic behavior can be determined by the sign of spectral bound of the infinitesimal generator when both birth and death rates are dependent on spatial variables; (iii) the weak solution and comparison principle can be established when both birth and death rates are dependent on spatial variables and time; and (iv) the above results can be generalized to an age-size structured model. In addition, we compare our results with the age-structured model with Laplacian diffusion in the first two cases (i) and (ii).