Invasion fronts with variable motility: Phenotype selection, spatial sorting and wave acceleration

Invasion fronts in ecology are well studied but very few mathematical results concern the case with variable motility (possibly due to mutations). Based on an apparently simple reaction–diffusion equation, we explain the observed phenomena of front acceleration (when the motility is unbounded) as well as other qualitative results, such as the existence of traveling waves and the selection of the most motile individuals (when the motility is bounded). The key argument for constructing and analysing the traveling waves is the derivation of a dispersion relation linking the wave speed and the spatial decay. When the motility is unbounded we show that the position of the front scales as <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mo stretchy="false">/</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> . When the mutation rate is low we show that the canonical equation for the dynamics of the fittest trait should be stated as a PDE in our context. It turns out to be a type of Burgers equation with a source term.

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