Existence and nonexistence of positive steady states in multi-species phytoplankton dynamics

In this paper we study a nonlocal reaction–diffusion–advection system modeling the growth of multiple competitive phytoplankton species in a vertical water column with incomplete mixing. We find that when the diffusion of the system is large, there is no positive steady states, and when the diffusion is not large, there exists at least one positive steady states under certain conditions. The main tools we use are the fixed point index theory, a refined comparison theorem and fine properties of the principal eigenvalues.