Multiple attractors and crisis route to chaos in a model food-chain

An attempt has been made to identify the mechanism, which is responsible for the existence of chaos in narrow parameter range in a realistic ecological model food-chain. Analytical and numerical studies of a three species foodchain model similar to a situation likely to be seen in terrestrial ecosystems has been carried out. The study of the model food chain suggests that the existence of chaos in narrow parameter ranges is caused by the crisis-induced sudden death of chaotic attractors. Varying one of the critical parameters in its range while keeping all the others constant, one can monitor the changes in the dynamical behaviour of the system, thereby fixing the regimes in which the system exhibits chaotic dynamics. The computed bifurcation diagrams and basin boundary calculations indicate that crisis is the underlying factor which generates chaotic dynamics in this model food-chain. We investigate sudden qualitative changes in chaotic dynamical behaviour, which occur at a parameter value a(1) = 1.7804 at which the chaotic attractor destroyed by boundary crisis with an unstable periodic orbit created by the saddle-node bifurcation. Multiple attractors with riddled basins and fractal boundaries are also observed. If ecological systems of interacting species do indeed exhibit multiple attractors etc.. the long term dynamics of such systems may undergo vast qualitative changes following epidemics or environmental catastrophes due to the system being pushed into the basin of a new attractor by the perturbation. Coupled with stochasticity. such complex behaviours may render such systems practically unpredictable. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.