Predator invasion in predator–prey model with prey-taxis in spatially heterogeneous environment

Abstract

We consider a predator–prey model with prey-taxis and Holling-type II functional responses in a spatially heterogeneous environment to analyze the effects of prey-taxis and the heterogeneity of an environment on predator invasion. To achieve our goal, we investigate the stability of semi-trivial solution in which the predator is absent. It is known that both the predator diffusion and the death rate contribute to the predator invasion in a heterogeneous habitat when there is no prey-taxis. In this paper, we show that predator invasion is affected by the prey-taxis and diffusions of the prey-taxis model for a certain range of predator death rates in a heterogeneous environment. Furthermore, in cases where predator invasion by predator diffusion does not occur in a particular death rate range of the predator, predator invasion can occur by prey-taxis in a spatially heterogeneous habitat. In addition, we compare this phenomenon to the corresponding predator–prey model with ratio-dependent functional responses. It is observed that none of the predator’s diffusion and prey-taxis affect the predator’s invasion, and that only the predator’s death rate contributes to predator invasion for the model with ratio-dependent functional responses.