Practical coexistence of two species in the chemostat – A slow–fast characterization

We show that the chemostat model with two species having different but close break-even concentrations exhibits a slow–fast dynamics. Considering small perturbations about the dilution rate for which break-even concentrations are identical, we use the Fenichel theory to show the coexistence of species for large times. Then we determine the reduced dynamics, which is non-trivial and characterized by the slopes of the growth functions about their break-even concentrations.