Impact of Allee Effect on the Spatio-Temporal Behavior of a Diffusive Epidemic Model in Heterogenous Environment

Abstract

In the current study, we have formulated an [Formula: see text] epidemic model incorporating the influence of Allee effect on the dynamics of the model system in space and time. During the spread of the disease, inhibition among the susceptible and infected individuals is seen, which is measured using the Crowley–Martin type incidence function. Extensive analysis explores the system’s stability and different bifurcation scenarios, including Hopf, saddle-node, transcritical, and Bogdanov–Takens. We also examine how these bifurcations react to parameter variations within the proposed model. The temporal model has further been extended to a spatial one to investigate the impact of the Allee effect on the formation of patterns for different values of the cross-diffusion coefficient. The well-posedness of the stationary solution and the global stability of the spatial system are derived. Also, the Turing instability, Hopf, and Turing bifurcation are calculated considering the transmission rate as critical parameter. In a heterogeneous environment, the spatial distribution of the susceptible population shows a complex structure with flat tabular surface and a few almost circular holes in surface plots for both strong and weak Allee effects. To further explore the role of Allee effect on pattern development for various cross-diffusion coefficient values, the temporal model has been spatially extended. Additionally, the transmission rate is taken into account while calculating the Turing instability and Hopf and Turing bifurcations. We ran numerical simulations to validate our analytical results for both spatial and nonspatial models. Our current model system can explain the recent occurrence of respiratory distress syndrome in endangered penguin species.