HOW DO PARTIALLY HIDING BEHAVIOR AND COMPLETELY HIDING BEHAVIOR IMPACT INTERACTING POPULATIONS?

Abstract

As the two main behaviors of prey populations in ecological systems, the partially hiding behavior (PHB) and the completely hiding behavior (CHB) play a significant role in determining the dynamics of predator–prey models. This work examines to the dynamical consequences of predator–prey systems with the PHB and the CHB. Previous research has independently studied the two behaviors, and the general conclusions are that the two behaviors can have positive and/or negative impacts on the considered population models. However, to our knowledge, no study has combined and compared the two behaviors in studying the dynamical consequences of predation interactions. Motivated by this, we investigated the dynamical consequences induced by the PHB and the CHB. From a mathematical point of view, the dynamical behaviors are studied and the corresponding sufficient conditions are given. Our findings are general and some published models are special cases of ours. From an ecological point of view, we find that the size of the ecological regions is mainly determined by the two behaviors, and which one is ecologically beneficial for the health coexistence of the interacting populations are primarily determined by the functional response and the attack coefficient of predators. Moreover, we conclude that the evolutionary and optimal choices of prey behavior (PHB or CHB) depend on the predators attack coefficient (large or small attack coefficient) and the resource level (abundant or pool resource level).