Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Biological Control Via "Ecological" Damping: An Approach That Attenuates Non-Target Effects, Rana D. Parshad, Kelly Black, Emmanuel Quansah, Matthew Beauregard

Faculty Publications

In this work we develop and analyze a mathematical model of biological control to prevent or attenuate the explosive increase of an invasive species population in a three-species food chain. We allow for finite time blowup in the model as a mathematical construct to mimic the explosive increase in population, enabling the species to reach “disastrous” levels, in a finite time. We next propose various controls to drive down the invasive population growth and, in certain cases, eliminate blow-up. The controls avoid chemical treatments and/or natural enemy introduction, thus eliminating various non-target effects associated with such classical methods. We refer …