COEXISTENCE OF COMPETING MICROBIAL SPECIES IN A CHEMOSTAT WHERE ONE POPULATION FEEDS ON ANOTHER

In this paper, we consider a model for a chemostat in which two microbial species compete for a single rate-limiting nutrient, while one of the species feeds on another. Under certain simplifying hypotheses, such a chemostat can be described by a system of three nonlinear ordinary differential equations. A theoretical study is conducted to characterize the possible types of solutions. A limit cycle solution was obtained for some parametric values of the system indicating that coexistence of the two species is possible in a significant range of the operating parameters.