THE MINIMAL SPEED OF TRAVELING FRONTS FOR A DIFFUSIVE LOTKA-VOLTERRA COMPETITION MODEL

This paper concerns the minimal speed of traveling wave fronts for a t wo-species diffusion-competition model of the Lotka-Volterra type. An earlier paper used this model to discuss the speed of invasion of the gray squirrel by estimating the model parameters from field data, and predicted its speed by the use of a heuristic analytical argument. We discuss the conditions which assure the validity of their argument and show numerically the existence of the realistic range of parameter va lues for which their heuristic argument does not hold. Especially for the case of the strong interaction of two competing species compared w ith the intraspecific competition, we show that all parameters appeari ng in the system affect the minimal speed of invasion. (C) 1998 Societ y for Mathematical Biology.