Global asymptotical stability and Hopf bifurcation for a three‐species Lotka‐Volterra food web model

Abstract

In this article, we consider a delayed three‐species Lotka‐Volterra food web model with diffusion and homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. We proved that the positive constant equilibrium solution is globally asymptotically stable for the system without time delays. By virtue of the sum of time delays as the bifurcation parameter, spatially homogeneous and inhomogeneous Hopf bifurcation at the positive constant equilibrium solution are proved to occur when the delay varied through a sequence of critical values. In addition, we consider the effect of cross‐diffusion on the system in the case that without time delays. By taking cross diffusion coefficients as the bifurcation parameter, our model undergoes inhomogeneous Hopf bifurcation around a positive constant equilibrium solution when the bifurcation parameter is varied through a sequence of critical values. A common feature in the most existing research work is that the bifurcation factor that induces Hopf bifurcation appears in the reaction terms (such as time delay) rather than diffusion terms. Our results demonstrate that the inhomogeneous Hopf bifurcation can be triggered by the effect of cross diffusion factors.