CHAOTIC DYNAMICS OF A STAGE-STRUCTURED PREY–PREDATOR SYSTEM WITH HUNTING COOPERATION AND FEAR IN PRESENCE OF TWO DISCRETE DELAYS

Depending on behavioral differences, reproductive capability and dependency, the life span of a species is divided mainly into two classes, namely immature and mature. In this paper, we have studied the dynamics of a predator–prey system considering stage structure in prey and the effect of predator-induced fear with two discrete time delays: maturation delay and fear response delay. We consider that predators cooperate during hunting of mature prey and also include its impact in fear term. The conditions for existence of different equilibria, their stability analysis are carried out for non-delayed system and bifurcation results are presented extensively. It is observed that the fear parameter has stabilizing effect whereas the cooperative hunting factor having destabilizing effect on the system via occurrence of supercritical Hopf-bifurcation. Further, we observe that the system exhibits backward bifurcation between interior equilibrium and predator free equilibrium and hence the situation of bi-stability occurs in the system. Thereafter, we differentiate the region of stability and instability in bi-parametric space. We have also studied the system’s dynamics with respect to maturation and fear response delay and observed that they also play a vital role in the system stability and occurrence of Hopf-bifurcation is shown with respect to both time delays. The system shows stability switching phenomenon and even higher values of fear response delay leads the system to enter in chaotic regime. The role of fear factor in switching phenomenon is discussed. Comprehensive numerical simulation and graphical presentation are carried out using MATLAB and MATCONT.