Survival induced by short-scale autocorrelations in birth-death-diffusion models with negative growth.

Abstract

In a birth, death, and diffusion process, the extinction-survival transition occurs when the average net growth rate is zero. For instance, in the presence of normally distributed time-varying stochastic growth rates with no autocorrelation, the transition indeed occurs at zero net growth rates. In contrast, if the growth rates are constant in time, a large enough variance in the growth rate will systematically ensure the survival of the global population even in a small system and, more importantly, even with a negative net growth rate. We here show that, surprisingly, for any intermediate temporal autocorrelation, any length of correlation, and any negative average growth rate, the same result holds. We test this argument on exponential and power law autocorrelation models and propose a simple condition for the growth rate variance at the transition.