Uniform persistence for nonautonomous and random parabolic Kolmogorov systems

The purpose of this paper is to investigate uniform persistence for nonautonomous and random parabolic Kohnogorov systems via the skew-product semiflows approach. It is first shown that the uniform persistence of the skew-product semiflow associated with a nonautonomous (random) parabolic Kolmogorov system implies that of the system. Various sufficient conditions in terms of the so-called unsaturatedness and/or Lyapunov exponents for uniform persistence of the skew-product semiflows are then provided. Among others, it is shown that if the associated skew-product semiflow has a global attractor and its restriction to the boundary of the state space has a Morse decomposition which is unsaturated or whose external Lyapunov exponents are positive, then it is uniformly persistent. More specific conditions are discussed for uniform persistence in n-species, particularly 3-species, random competitive systems. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.