Large Population Limit of Interacting Population Dynamics via Generalized Gradient Structures

This chapter focuses on the derivation of a doubly nonlocal Fisher-KPP model, which is a macroscopic nonlocal evolution equation describing population dynamics in the large population limit. The derivation starts from a microscopic individual-based model described as a stochastic process on the space of atomic measures with jump rates that satisfy detailed balance w.r.t. to a reference measure. We make use of the so-called “cosh” generalized gradient structure for the law of the process to pass to the large population limit using evolutionary gamma convergence. In addition to characterizing the large population limit as the solution of the nonlocal Fisher-KPP model, our variational approach further provides a generalized gradient flow structure for the limit equation as well as an entropic propagation of chaos result.