Comparison between two tritrophic food chain models with multiple delays and anti-predation effect

Exploring the predator-prey linkage in food chain system is the most familiar research work in population biology. Recently, some research experiments show that predator-prey interaction not only governed by direct hunting but also influenced by some indirect effect such as fear effect (felt by prey) that may change the physiological behavior of prey. Based upon this fact, we consider a tritrophic food chain model incorporating with anti-predation response (fear effect) and multiple time delays for biomass conversion from prey to middle predator and middle to top predator. We analyze the resulting delay differential equations and explore how the anti-predation response level affects the population dynamics. We also investigate the effect of delay parameters, for which the model system switches its stability through Hopf-bifurcation. We compare all of our results between two different food chain models consisting of two different functional responses. Some numerical simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness of the derived theoretical results.

Automated summary

Research shows predator-prey interaction is not only influenced by direct hunting, but also by indirect factors such as fear effect. Incorporating anti-predation response and multiple time delays in a tritrophic food chain model can affect population dynamics and stability. The model system may switch stability through Hopf-bifurcation due to delay parameters.