We investigate the time-optimal control problem in SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) epidemic models, focusing on different control policies: vaccination, isolation, culling, and reduction of transmission. Applying the Pontryagin's Minimum Principle (PMP) to the unconstrained control problems (i.e. without costs of control or resource limitations), we prove that, for all the policies investigated, only bang-bang controls with at most one switch are admitted. When a switch occurs, the optimal strategy is to delay the control action some amount of time and then apply the control at the maximum rate for the remainder of the outbreak. This result is in contrast with previous findings on the unconstrained problems of minimizing the total infectious burden over an outbreak, where the optimal strategy is to use the maximal control for the entire epidemic. Then, the critical consequence of our results is that, in a wide range of epidemiological circumstances, it may be impossible to minimize the total infectious burden while minimizing the epidemic duration, and vice versa. Moreover, numerical simulations highlighted additional unexpected results, showing that the optimal control can be delayed also when the control reproduction number is lower than one and that the switching time from no control to maximum control can even occur after the peak of infection has been reached. Our results are especially important for livestock diseases where the minimization of outbreaks duration is a priority due to sanitary restrictions imposed to farms during ongoing epidemics, such as animal movements and export bans.

In this paper we consider the Shigesada-Kawasaki-Teramoto (SKT) model to account for stable inhomogeneous steady states exhibiting spatial segregation, which describe a situation of coexistence of two competing species. We provide a deeper understanding on the conditions required on both the cross-diffusion and the reaction coefficients for non-homogeneous steady states to exist, by combining a detailed linearized analysis with advanced numerical bifurcation methods via the continuation software pde2path. We report some numerical experiments suggesting that, when cross-diffusion is taken into account, there exist positive and stable non-homogeneous steady states outside of the range of parameters for which the coexistence homogeneous steady state is positive. Furthermore, we also analyze the case in which self-diffusion terms are considered.

In this paper we investigate the bifurcation structure of the triangular SKT model in the weak competition regime and of the corresponding fast-reaction system in 1D and 2D domains via numerical continuation methods. We show that the software pde2path can be adapted to treat cross-diffusion systems, reproducing the already computed bifurcation diagrams on 1D domains. We show the convergence of the bifurcation structure obtained selecting the growth rate as bifurcation parameter. Then, we compute the bifurcation diagram on a 2D rectangular domain providing the shape of the solutions along the branches and linking the results with the Turing instability analysis. In 1D and 2D, we pay particular attention to the fast-reaction limit by always computing sequences of bifurcation diagrams as the time-scale separation parameter tends to zero. We show that the bifurcation diagram undergoes major deformations once the fast-reaction systems limits onto the cross-diffusion singular limit. Furthermore, we find evidence for time-periodic solutions by detecting Hopf bifurcations, we characterize several regions of multi-stability, and improve our understanding of the shape of patterns in 2D for the SKT model.

We consider in this paper a microscopic model (that is, a system of three reaction-diffusion equations) incorporating the dynamics of handling and searching predators, and show that its solutions converge when a small parameter tends to 0 towards the solutions of a reaction-cross diffusion system of predator-prey type involving a Holling-type II or Beddington-DeAngelis functional response. We also provide a study of the Turing instability domain of the obtained equations and (in the case of the Beddington-DeAngelis functional response) compare it to the same instability domain when the cross diffusion is replaced by a standard diffusion.If J * 11 < 0, we have J * 11− J * ∆22 + + J * 22 − J * ∆11 + − J * 12 − J * ∆21 − , so that condition (90) does not hold and, as in the case of linear diffusion, no Turing instability can appear. On the opposite, if J * 11 > 0, we have J * 11 + J * ∆22 + + J * 22 − J * ∆11 + − J * 12 − J * ∆21 − .Then, for any k = 0 (so that λ k > 0, we can select D 2 large enough and D 3 ∼ D 2 so that det J − (J * 11 J * ∆22 − J * 12 J * ∆21 )λ k < 0. Then, when D 1 > 0 is small enough, det M < 0 and the Turing instability appears.We then compare the Turing instability regions in the cases 2 and 3, that is when the characteristic matrices are

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Pest phenological models describe the cumulative flux of the individuals into each stage of the life cycle of a stage-structured population. Phenological models are widely used tools in pest control decision making. Despite the fact that these models do not provide information on population abundance, they share some advantages with respect to the more sophisticated and complex demographic models. The main advantage is that they do not require data collection to define the initial conditions of model simulation, reducing the effort for field sampling and the high uncertainty affecting sample estimates. Phenological models are often built considering the developmental rate function only. To the aim of adding more realism to phenological models, in this paper we explore the consequences of improving these models taking into consideration three additional elements: the age distribution of individuals which exit from the overwintering phase, the age-and temperature-dependent profile of the fecundity rate function and the consideration of a temperature-dependent mortality rate function. Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the effect of these elements with respect to phenological models considering development rate functions only. To further test the implications of different models formulation, we compare results obtained from different phenological models to the case study of the codling moth (Cydia pomonella) a primary pest of the apple orchard. The results obtained from model comparison are discussed in view of their potential application in pest control decision support.

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