ROLE OF SPACE IN AN ECO-EPIDEMIC PREDATOR-PREY SYSTEM WITH THE EFFECT OF FEAR AND SELECTIVE PREDATION

Abstract

In ecological systems, the fear of predation risk asserts a privilege to the prey species by restricting their exposure to the potential predators. It also imposes costs by constraining the exploration of optimal resources. Additional foods for predators play a pivotal role in the biological conservation programs. The predators have ability to distinguish between the susceptible and infected prey items, and they avoid the latter ones to reduce their fitness cost. A predator-prey model with disease in prey is investigated in this study with an aim to explore the effects of fear factor, additional foods and selective predation on the ecological systems. We also investigate the spatio-temporal model to incorporate the facts that the prey and predator populations perform active movements in the spatial directions for their biological relevance. Both the temporal and spatio-temporal models are analyzed through noteworthy mathematical as well as numerical techniques. Our simulation results show that the level of fear responsible for the reduction in the birth rate of susceptible prey, rate of disease transmission and the selective feeding behavior of predators have potentials to create instability in the ecosystem. In contrast, the level of fear responsible for reduction in the disease prevalence can restore stability in the ecosystem by killing the persistent oscillations. Our eco-epidemic system exhibits chaotic nature if the growth of predators due to additional food sources is very low. We find that the spatio-temporal model demonstrates different spatial patterns of the prey and predator populations in the ecosystem.