Analysis of a Monod–Haldene type food chain chemostat with seasonally variably pulsed input and washout

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce and study a model of a Monod–Haldene type food chain chemostat with seasonally variably pulsed input and washout. We investigate the subsystem with substrate and prey and study the stability of the periodic solutions, which are the boundary periodic solutions of the system. The stability analysis of the boundary periodic solution yields an invasion threshold. By use of standard techniques of bifurcation theory, we prove that above this threshold there are periodic oscillations in substrate, prey and predator. Simple cycles may give way to chaos in a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations. Furthermore, bifurcation diagrams have shown that there exists complexity for the pulsed system including periodic doubling cascade, periodic halving cascade and Pitchfork bifurcations and tangent bifurcations.