A degenerate parabolic system with self-diffusion for a mutualistic model in ecology

This paper deals with the behavior of positive solution for a degenerate parabolic system with homo-geneous Dirichlet boundary conditions describing a cooperating two-species Lotka-Volterra model. The local existence and uniqueness of a classical solution are given. Some comparison principles and positivity lemmas are also presented. Further, we show that the solution is global if the intra-specific competitions of the species are strong. whereas the solution may blow up if the intra-specific competitions are weak. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.