Competitive coexistence and competitive exclusion for a nonlinear community with delay effect and impulsive birth

Abstract By constructing a population model of multi-species competition, a community with nonlinear interaction relationship is investigated, in which the species’ response delay and environmental fluctuation effects (i.e., seasonal fluctuation of resource supplies and species’ reproductive activities) on population are considered. Firstly, the conditions about competitive coexistence (i.e., persistence of all species) and competitive exclusion (i.e., only partial of species, but not all, keep persistence) of the community are established, and the underlying ecological mechanism of these results are analyzed. Secondly, by some illustrative examples, the interactive effects of nonlinear competition, species’ response delay and environmental fluctuation on the structure of community are explored. It is demonstrated that small response delay and slight deviation of nonlinear competition indexes from 1 have little impact on the coexistence of community, but acute changes have distinct negative influence on community coexistence. This reveals to us that parameter perturbations of natural communities should keep in an appropriate range, which is of great significance in conservation and restoration biology.