English

Reaction fronts in persistent random walks with demographic stochasticity

Biological Physics 2019-01-09 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

Standard Reaction-Diffusion (RD) systems are characterized by infinite velocities and no persistence in the movement of individuals, two conditions that are violated when considering living organisms. Here we consider a discrete particle model in which individuals move following a persistent random walk with finite speed and grow with logistic dynamics. We show that when the number of individuals is very large, the individual-based model is well described by the continuous Reactive Cattaneo Equation (RCE), but for smaller values of the carrying capacity important finite-population effects arise. The effects of fluctuations on the propagation speed are investigated both considering the RCE with a cutoff in the reaction term and by means of numerical simulations of the individual-based model. Finally, a more general L\'evy walk process for the transport of individuals is examined and an expression for the front speed of the resulting traveling wave is proposed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.06137,
  title  = {Reaction fronts in persistent random walks with demographic stochasticity},
  author = {Davide Vergni and Stefano Berti and Angelo Vulpiani and Massimo Cencini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.06137},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:08:33.692Z