Continuous-state branching processes, extremal processes and super-individuals

The long-term behavior of flows of continuous-state branching processes are characterized through subordinators and extremal processes. The extremal processes arise in the case of supercritical processes with infinite mean and of subcritical processes with infinite variation. The jumps of these extremal processes are interpreted as specific initial individuals whose progenies overwhelm the population. These individuals, which correspond to the records of a certain Poisson point process embedded in the flow, are called super-individuals. They radically increase the growth rate to +infinity in the supercritical case, and slow down the rate of extinction in the subcritical one.