No abstract

There is not a single species that does not strive for survival. Every species has crafted specialized techniques to avoid possible dangers that mostly come from the side of their predators. Survival instincts in nature led prey populations to develop many anti-predator strategies. Vigilance is a well-observed effective antipredator strategy that influences predator–prey dynamics significantly. We consider a simple discrete-time predator-prey model assuming that vigilance affects the predation rate and the growth rate of the prey. We investigate the system dynamics by constructing isoperiodic and Lyapunov exponent diagrams with the simultaneous variation of the prey’s growth rate and the strength of vigilance. We observe a series of different types of organized periodic structures with different kinds of period-adding phenomena. The usual period-bubbling phenomenon is shown near a shrimp-shaped periodic structure. We observe the presence of double and triple heterogeneous attractors. We also notice Wada basin boundaries in the system, which is quite rare in ecological systems. The complex dynamics of the system in biparameter space are explored through extensive numerical simulations.

In the present paper, we investigate the impact of fear in an intraguild predation model. We consider that the growth rate of intraguild prey (IG prey) is reduced due to the cost of fear of intraguild predator (IG predator), and the growth rate of basal prey is suppressed due to the cost of fear of both the IG prey and the IG predator. The basic mathematical results such as positively invariant space, boundedness of the solutions, persistence of the system have been investigated. We further analyze the existence and local stability of the biologically feasible equilibrium points, and also study the Hopf-bifurcation analysis of the system with respect to the fear parameter. The direction of Hopf-bifurcation and the stability properties of the periodic solutions have also been investigated. We observe that in the absence of fear, omnivory produces chaos in a three-species food chain system. However, fear can stabilize the chaos thus obtained. We also observe that the system shows bistability behavior between IG prey free equilibrium and IG predator free equilibrium, and bistability between IG prey free equilibrium and interior equilibrium. Furthermore, we observe that for a suitable set of parameter values, the system may exhibit multiple stable limit cycles. We perform extensive numerical simulations to explore the rich dynamics of a simple intraguild predation model with fear effect.

In ecology, the predator’s impact goes beyond just killing the prey. In the present work, we explore the role of fear in the dynamics of a discrete-time predator-prey model where the predator-prey interaction obeys Holling type-II functional response. Owing to the increasing strength of fear, the system becomes stable from chaotic oscillations via inverse Neimark–Sacker bifurcation. Extensive numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the intricate dynamics for the organization of periodic structures in the bi-parameter space of the system. We observe fear induced multistability between different pairs of coexisting heterogeneous attractors due to the overlapping of multiple periodic domains in the bi-parameter space. The basin sets of the coexisting attractors are obtained and discussed at length. Multistability in the predator-prey system is important because the dynamics of the predator and prey populations in the critical parameter zone becomes uncertain.

In the present paper, we investigate the impact of time delay during cooperative hunting in a predator–prey model. We consider that cooperative predators do not aggregate in a group instantly, but individuals use different stages and strategies such as tactile, visual, vocal cues, or a suitable combination of these to communicate with each other. We observe that delay in hunting cooperation has stabilizing as well as destabilizing effects in the system. Also, for an increase in the strength of the delay, the system dynamics switch multiple times and eventually become chaotic. We see that depending on the threshold of time delay, the system may restore its original state or may go far away from its original state and unable to recollect its memory. Furthermore, we explore the dynamics of the system in different bi-parameter spaces and observe that for a particular range of other parameter values, the system dynamics switch multiple times with an increase of delay in all the planes. Different kinds of multistability behaviors, the coexistence of multiple attractors, and interesting changes in the basins of attraction of the system are also observed. We infer that depending on the initial population size and the strength of cooperation delay, the populations can exhibit stable coexistence, oscillating coexistence, or extinction of the predator species.