Predation may defeat spatial spread of infection

A model of a phytoplankton-zooplankton prey-predator system with viral infection of phytoplankton is investigated. Virus particles (V) are taken into account by an explicit equation. Phytoplankton is split into a susceptible (S) and an infected (I) class. A lytic infection is considered, thus, infected phytoplankton cells stop reproducing as soon as the infection starts and die at an increased mortality rate. Zooplankton (Z) is grazing on both susceptible and infected phytoplankton following a Holling-type II functional response. After the local dynamics of the V-S-I-Z system is analysed, numerical solutions of a stochastic reaction-diffusion model of the four species are presented. These show a spatial competition between zooplankton and viruses, although these two species are not explicitly coupled by the model equations.