Spectral Bound and Reproduction Number for Infinite-Dimensional Population Structure and Time Heterogeneity

Spectral bounds of quasi-positive matrices are crucial mathematical threshold parameters in population models that are formulated as systems of ordinary differential equations: the sign of the spectral bound of the variational matrix at 0 decides whether, at low density, the population becomes extinct or grows. Another important threshold parameter is the reproduction number $\mathcal{R}$, which is the spectral radius of a related positive matrix. As is well known, the spectral bound and $\mathcal{R}-1$ have the same sign provided that the matrices have a particular form. The relation between spectral bound and reproduction number extends to models with infinite-dimensional state space and then holds between the spectral bound of a resolvent-positive closed linear operator and the spectral radius of a positive bounded linear operator. We also extend an analogous relation between the spectral radii of two positive linear operators which is relevant for discrete-time models. We illustrate the general theory by applying it to an epidemic model with distributed susceptibility, population models with age structure, and, using evolution semigroups, to time-heterogeneous population models.