Dynamics of nonautonomous chemostat models

Abstract

Chemostat models have a long history in the biological sciences as well as in biomathematics. Hitherto most investigations have focused on autonomous systems, that is, with constant parameters, inputs, and outputs. In many realistic situations these quantities can vary in time, either deterministically (e.g., periodically) or randomly. They are then nonautonomous dynamical systems for which the usual concepts of autonomous systems do not apply or are too restrictive. The newly developing theory of nonautonomous dynamical systems provides the necessary concepts, in particular that of a nonautonomous pullback attractor. These will be used here to analyze the dynamical behavior of nonautonomous chemostat models with or without wall growth, time-dependent delays, variable inputs and outputs. The possibility of overyielding in nonautonomous chemostats will also be discussed.