SPEED SIGN OF TRAVELING WAVES TO A COMPETITIVE LOTKA-VOLTERRA RECURSIVE SYSTEM WITH BISTABLE NONLINEARITY.

Traveling wave propagation is a significant phenomenon observed in population biology. Due to the occurrence of nonlocal effect in recursive systems, a deep understanding of the wavefront in the propagation direction (speed sign) is challenging. In this paper we study the sign of wave speed for bistable traveling waves to a two-species competitive system that biologically models the dynamics of two species in competition for a common resource. By a proper choice of the kernel functions, we transfer our model into a coupled localized differential system and shed a new light on how to determine the wave speed sign. Suffcient conditions with symmetry are obtained on the propagation directions of the wavefronts. This symmetry is further verified in the final analysis and numerical simulations are provided to illustrate our theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]