Formation of stationary periodic patterns in a model of two competing populations with chemotaxis

Abstract: One of the classical models in mathematical biology is the Lotka-Volterra competition model, describing the dynamics of two populations competing for resources. Two possible regimes in this system are given by their coexistence or extinction of a weaker population. In a distributed system with diffusive spatial coupling, travelling fronts occur, corresponding to transitions between stationary states. In this work we will consider the competition model extended by extra interaction between involved populations which is given by chemotactic coupling, namely, assuming that one species produces a chemical agent which causes the taxis of another species. It is known that in a one-species model (i.e. Keller-Segel model) production of chemoattractor results in formation of stationary periodic (or Turing-type) patterns. In this work, we will investigate conditions for the formation of stationary periodic patterns in a two-species competition model with chemotaxis. We show that in this system periodic patterns can emerge in the course of Turing-type instability (classical way) or from a stable steady state, corresponding to the extinction of one of the species, due to a finite, or over-threshold, amplitude disturbance. We study the characteristics of emerging periodic pattern, such as its amplitude and wavelength, by means of Fourier analysis. We also perform computational simulations to verify our analytical results.