COMBINED IMPACT OF CANNIBALISM AND ALLEE EFFECT ON THE DYNAMICS OF A PREY–PREDATOR MODEL

Abstract

In ecological environment, Allee effect is one of the important factors which cause significant changes to the system dynamics. In this paper, using the theory of dynamical systems, we analyze a variation of a standard cannibalistic two-dimensional prey–predator model with Holling type-II functional response in the presence of both weak and strong Allee effects. We have analyzed the impact of strong and weak Allee effects on the dynamics of a cannibalistic system, knowing the dynamics of the cannibalistic model without Allee effect. We have deduced that in the presence of cannibalism, both strong and weak Allee effects generate bistability between equilibrium points. For strong Allee effect, bistability occurs between trivial equilibrium point and predator-free equilibrium point as well as between trivial and coexistence equilibrium points. But for weak Allee effect, bistability occurs only between coexistence equilibrium points. We also pointed out that the cannibalistic system without Allee effect exhibits tristability among the trivial equilibrium point, coexistence equilibrium point having low prey concentration and coexistence equilibrium point having comparatively high prey concentration. But in the presence of strong Allee effect, cannibalistic system experiences tristability among trivial and two other stable coexistence equilibrium points. By a comprehensive bifurcation analysis, we have observed that Allee effect enriches both the local and global dynamics of the system. Here, we have reported all possible codimension-one and codimension-two bifurcations extensively by choosing cannibalism, Allee effect and predator natural death rate as the bifurcation parameters. In the analysis of bifurcations, we have explored the existence of transcritical bifurcation, saddle-node bifurcation, Hopf bifurcation, Bogdanov–Takens bifurcation and Bautin bifurcation. Our analytical findings are validated through exhaustive numerical simulations. Finally, we have reported a comparative study between the impacts of strong and weak Allee effects on the dynamics of the cannibalistic system.