Influence of the Fear Effect on a Holling Type II Prey–Predator System with a Michaelis–Menten Type Harvesting

Abstract

In this work, a prey–predator system with Holling type II response function including a Michaelis–Menten type capture and fear effect is put forward to be studied. Firstly, the existence and stability of equilibria of the system are discussed. Then, by considering the harvesting coefficient as bifurcation parameter, the occurrence of Hopf bifurcation at the positive equilibrium point and the existence of limit cycle emerging through Hopf bifurcation are proved. Furthermore, through the analysis of fear effect and capture item, we find that: (i) the fear effect can either stabilize the system by excluding periodic solutions or destroy the stability of the system and produce periodic oscillation behavior; (ii) increasing the level of fear can reduce the final number of predators, but not lead to extinction; (iii) the harvesting coefficient also has significant influence on the persistence of the predator. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the results.