ROLE OF ALLEE EFFECT AND HARVESTING OF A FOOD-WEB SYSTEM IN THE PRESENCE OF SCAVENGERS

Abstract

The role of scavengers, which consume the carcasses of predators along with predation of the prey, has been ignored in comparisons to herbivores and predators. It has now become a topic of high interest among researchers working with food-web systems of prey–predator interactions. The food-web considered in these works contains prey, predators, and scavengers as the third species. In this work, we attempt to study a food-web model of these species in the presence of the multiplicative Allee effect and harvesting. It is observed that this makes the model more complex in the form of multiple co-existing steady states. The conditions for the existence and local stability of all possible steady states of the proposed system are analyzed. The global stability of the steady state lying on the x-axis and the interior steady state have been discussed by choosing suitable Lyapunov functions. The existence conditions for saddle-node and Hopf bifurcations are derived analytically. The stability of Hopf bifurcating periodic solutions with respect to both Allee and harvesting constants is examined. It is also observed that multiple Hopf bifurcation thresholds occur for harvesting parameters in the case of two co-existing steady states, which indicates that the system may regain its stability. The proposed model is also studied beyond Hopf bifurcation thresholds, where we have observed that the model is capable of exhibiting period-doubling routes to chaos, which can be controlled by a suitable choice of Allee and harvesting parameters. The largest Lyapunov exponents and sensitivity to initial conditions are examined to ensure the chaotic nature of the system.