Paper 3, Section I, E
Part II, 2015
The number of a certain type of annual plant in year is given by . Each plant produces seeds that year and then dies before the next year. The proportion of seeds that germinate to produce a new plant the next year is given by where . Explain briefly why the system can be described by
Give conditions on for a stable positive equilibrium of the plant population size to be possible.
Winters become milder and now a proportion of all plants survive each year . Assume that plants produce seeds as before while they are alive. Show that a wider range of now gives a stable positive equilibrium population.