BIFURCATION ANALYSIS OF AN ALLELOPATHIC PHYTOPLANKTON MODEL

Abstract

This paper analyzes an allelopathic phytoplankton competition model, which was proposed by Bandyopadhyay [Dynamical analysis of a allelopathic phytoplankton model, J Biol Syst 14(02):205–217, 2006]. Our study refines the previous results and finds at most three positive equilibria for the system. The existence conditions of all positive equilibria and the corresponding stability cases are given in the paper. Interesting dynamical phenomena such as bistability, saddle-node bifurcation, and cusp bifurcation are found. It is shown that the rate of toxin releases heavily influences the positive equilibria of the system under certain conditions. Numerical simulations verify the feasibility of the theoretical results.