Persistence and extinction of species in a disease-induced ecological system under environmental stochasticity.

Abstract

Population extinction is a serious issue both from the theoretical and practical points of view. We explore here how environmental noise influences persistence and extinction of interacting species in presence of a pathogen even when the populations remain stable in its deterministic counterpart. Multiplicative white noise is introduced in a deterministic predator-prey-parasite system by randomly perturbing three biologically important parameters. It is revealed that the extinction criterion of species may be satisfied in multiple ways, indicating various routes to extinction, and disease eradication may be possible with the right environmental noise. Predator population cannot survive, even when its focal prey strongly persists if its growth rate is lower than some critical value, measured by half of the corresponding noise intensity. It is shown that the average extinction time of population decreases with increasing noise intensity and the probability distribution of the extinction time follows the log-normal density curve. A case study on red grouse (prey) and fox (predator) interaction in presence of the parasites trichostrongylus tenuis of grouse is presented to demonstrate that the model well fits the field data.