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Stability of two competing populations in chemostat where one of the population changes its average mass of division in response to changes of its population

D. Voulgarelis,A. Velayudhan,F. Smith

Published 2019 in PLoS ONE

ABSTRACT

This paper considers a novel dynamical behaviour of two microbial populations, competing in a chemostat over a single substrate, that is only possible through the use of population balance equations (PBEs). PBEs are partial integrodifferential equations that represent a distribution of cells according to some internal state, mass in our case. Using these equations, realistic parameter values and the assumption that one population can deploy an emergency mechanism, where it can change the mean mass of division and hence divide faster, we arrive at two different steady states, one oscillatory and one non-oscillatory both of which seem to be stable. A steady state of either form is normally either unstable or only attainable through external control (cycling the dilution rate). In our case no external control is used. Finally, in the oscillatory case we attempt to explain how oscillations appear in the biomass without any explicit dependence on the division rate (the function that oscillates) through the approximation of fractional moments as a combination of integer moments. That allows an implicit dependence of the biomass on the number of cells which in turn is directly dependent on the division rate function.

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