Journal of Applied Mathematics
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 925141, 12 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/925141
Research Article

Biological Invasion and Coexistence in Intraguild Predation

1School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Northwest University for Nationalities, Lanzhou 730030, China
2Department of Mathematics, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China

Received 28 August 2012; Accepted 13 December 2012

Academic Editor: Julián López-Gómez

Copyright © 2013 Wenting Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Invasion of an exotic species initiated by its local introduction is considered subject to intraguild predation (IGP). Mathematically, the system dynamics is described by three nonlinear diffusion-reaction equations in two spatial dimensions. The key factors that determine successful invasion are investigated by means of extensive numerical simulations. The results reveal high asymmetry. An exotic species can invade successfully if it acted as the top predator and engaged in IGP, and the IGP interactions of the postinvasion web will be kept. While the exotic species were introduced as the intraguild prey (IGprey), they invade and spread through patchy invasion which corresponds to the invasion at the edge of extinction. Increase of the IGprey's dispersal rate and decrease of the IGpredator's may make the IGprey invade. But the interactions of the postinvasion web will change from IGP to competition, which is absolutely different from the first case. Finally, the common existence of IGP was explored once again from the perspective of biological invasion.