Nonlinear reaction-diffusion equations, with Fisher logistic growth and constant diffusion coefficient, have been used in fisheries research to estimate sustainable harvesting rates and critical domain sizes of no-take areas. However, constant diffusivity in a population density corresponds to standard Brownian motion of individuals, with a normal distribution for displacement over a fixed time interval. For available good data sets on mobile fish populations, the distribution is certainly not normal. The data can be fitted with a long-tailed stable Lévy distribution that results from diffusion by fractional Laplacian. Exact multidimensional solutions are developed here for realistic Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovski-Piscounov models with diffusion by fractional Laplacian. These can also account for a delay in the reaction term. It is then shown how to modify critical domain sizes of protected areas with Dirichlet and Robin boundary conditions for populations.
Funding
The author gratefully acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council for the project DP220101680.