Maximum population sizes in host-parasitoid models

Abstract

We are concerned with the problem of characterizing the distribution of the maximum number of individuals alive during a fixed time interval in host-parasitoid models, which is shown to have a matrix exponential form. We present simple conditions on the rates of change of population sizes for the matrix exponential solution to be explicit or algorithmically tractable. A particularly appealing feature of our solution based on splitting methods is that it allows us to obtain global error control.