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Life and Death near a Windy Oasis

Karin A. Dahmen·David R. Nelson·Nadav M. Shnerb
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Abstract

We propose a simple experiment to study delocalization and extinction in inhomogeneous biological systems. The nonlinear steady state for, say, a bacteria colony living on and near a patch of nutrient or favorable illumination (``oasis'') in the presence of a drift term (``wind'') is computed. The bacteria, described by a simple generalization of the Fisher equation, diffuse, divide A -> A+A, die A -> 0, and annihilate A+A -> 0. At high wind velocities all bacteria are blown into an unfavorable region (``desert''), and the colony dies out. At low velocity a steady state concentration survives near the oasis. In between these two regimes there is a critical velocity at which bacteria first survive. If the ``desert'' supports a small nonzero population, this extinction transition is replaced by a delocalization transition with increasing velocity. Predictions for the behavior as a function of wind velocity are made for one and two dimensions.

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Karin A. Dahmen, David R. Nelson, Nadav M. Shnerb. 1998-07-30. Life and Death near a Windy Oasis. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9807394

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