Chaos in a nonautonomous eco-epidemiological model with delay

In this paper, we propose and analyze a nonautonomous predator-prey model with disease in prey, and a discrete time delay for the incubation period in disease transmission. Employing the theory of differential inequalities, we find sufficient conditions for the permanence of the system. Further, we use Lyapunov's functional method to obtain sufficient conditions for global asymptotic stability of the system. We observe that the permanence of the system is unaffected due to presence of incubation delay. However, incubation delay affects the global stability of the positive periodic solution of the system. To reinforce the analytical results and to get more insight into the system's behavior, we perform some numerical simulations of the autonomous and nonautonomous systems with and without time delay. We observe that for the gradual increase in the magnitude of incubation delay, the autonomous system develops limit cycle oscillation through a Hopf-bifurcation while the corresponding nonautonomous system shows chaotic dynamics through quasi-periodic oscillations. We apply basic tools of non-linear dynamics such as Poincaré section and maximum Lyapunov exponent to confirm the chaotic behavior of the system.

Effect of multiple delays on the dynamics of cannibalistic prey–predator system with disease in both populations

In the present paper, we investigate a prey–predator system with disease in both prey and predator populations and the predator population is cannibalistic in nature. The model is extended by introducing incubation delays in disease transmission terms. Local stability analysis of the system around the biologically feasible equilibria is studied. The bifurcation analysis of the system around the interior equilibrium is also studied. The sufficient conditions for the permanence of the system are derived in the presence of delays. We observe that incubation delays have the ability to destabilize the cannibalistic prey–predator system. Finally, we perform numerical experiments to substantiate our analytical findings.

THE ROLE OF ADDITIONAL FOOD IN A PREDATOR–PREY MODEL WITH A PREY REFUGE

In this paper, we propose and analyze a predator–prey model with a prey refuge and additional food for predators. We study the impact of a prey refuge on the stability dynamics, when a constant proportion or a constant number of prey moves to the refuge area. The system dynamics are studied using both analytical and numerical techniques. We observe that the prey refuge can replace the predator–prey oscillations by a stable equilibrium if the refuge size crosses a threshold value. It is also observed that, if the refuge size is very high, then the extinction of the predator population is certain. Further, we observe that enhancement of additional food for predators prevents the extinction of the predator and also replaces the stable limit cycle with a stable equilibrium. Our results suggest that additional food for the predators enhances the stability and persistence of the system. Extensive numerical experiments are performed to illustrate our analytical findings.