Repulsive chemotaxis and predator evasion in predator prey models with diffusion and prey taxis

TL;DR

This paper investigates how chemical signaling influences predator evasion and prey-predator dynamics in diffusive models, revealing conditions for stability, pattern formation, and finite-time blow-up through analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

It introduces and analyzes predator-prey models with prey taxis and chemical signaling, establishing existence, stability, bifurcation, and blow-up conditions, which are novel in this context.

Findings

Existence of global classical solutions in 1D for model A and in any dimension for model B.

Crowley-Martin response prevents blow-up in certain conditions.

Prey taxis can destabilize steady states when taxis coefficients are large.

Abstract

The role of predator evasion mediated by chemical signaling is studied in a diffusive prey-predator model when prey-taxis is taken into account (model A) or not (model B) with taxis strength coefficients $\chi$ and $\xi$ respectively. In the kinetic part of the models it is assumed that the rate of prey consumption includes functional responses of Holling, Bedington-DeAngelis or Crowley-Martin. Existence of global-in-time classical solutions to model A is proved in space dimension n=1 while to model B for any $n\geq 1$. The Crowley-Martin response combined with bounded rate of signal production precludes blow-up of solution in model A for $n\leq 3$. Local and global stability of a constant coexistence steady state which is stable for ODE and purely diffusive model are studied along with mechanism of Hopf bifurcation for Model B when $\chi$ exceeds some critical value. In model A it is shown that prey taxis may destabilize the coexistence steady state provided $\chi$ and $\xi$ are big enough. Numerical simulation depicts emergence of complex space-time patterns for both models and indicate existence of solutions to model A which blow-up in finite time for $n=2$