Qualitative properties of coexistence and semi-trivial limit profiles of nonautonomous nonlinear parabolic Dirichlet systems

We study the symmetry properties of limit profiles of nonautonomous nonlinear parabolic systems with Dirichlet boundary conditions in radial bounded domains. In the case of competitive systems, we show that if the initial profiles satisfy a reflectional inequality with respect to a hyperplane, then all limit profiles are foliated Schwarz symmetric with respect to antipodal points. One of the main ingredients in the proof is a new parabolic version of Serrin’s boundary point lemma. Results on radial symmetry of semi-trivial profiles are discussed also for noncompetitive systems.