Traveling wave solutions in a plant population model with a seed bank.

We propose an integro-difference equation model to predict the spatial spread of a plant population with a seed bank. The formulation of the model consists of a nonmonotone convolution integral operator describing the recruitment and seed dispersal and a linear contraction operator addressing the effect of the seed bank. The recursion operator of the model is noncompact, which poses a challenge to establishing the existence of traveling wave solutions. We show that the model has a spreading speed, and prove that the spreading speed can be characterized as the slowest speed of a class of traveling wave solutions by using an asymptotic fixed point theorem. Our numerical simulations show that the seed bank has the stabilizing effect on the spatial patterns of traveling wave solutions.