Motivated by structured parasite populations in aquaculture we consider a class of size-structured population models, where individuals may be recruited into the population with distributed states at birth. The mathematical model which describes the evolution of such a population is a first-order nonlinear partial integro-differential equation of hyperbolic type. First, we use positive perturbation arguments and utilise results from the spectral...

Let be a locally compact Hausdorff space. Let $A_i$, i = 0,1,...,N, be generators of Feller semigroups in C₀() with related Feller processes $X_i=X_i\left(t\right),t\ge 0$ and let ${\alpha }_i$, i = 0,...,N, be non-negative continuous functions on with ${\sum }_{i=0}^N{\alpha }_i=1$. Assume that the closure A of ${\sum }_{k=0}^N{\alpha }_k{A}_k$ defined on ${\bigcap }_{i=0}^N\left(A_i\right)$ generates a Feller semigroup T(t), t ≥ 0 in C₀(). A natural interpretation of a related Feller process X = X(t), t ≥ 0 is that it evolves according to the following heuristic rules: conditional on being at a point p ∈ , with probability ${\alpha }_i\left(p\right)$, the process...