The effect of "fear" on two species competition
Vaibhava Srivastava, Eric M. Takyi, Rana D. Parshad

TL;DR
This paper explores how fear influences competition dynamics between two species, revealing complex behaviors like bi-stability and potential shifts from coexistence to exclusion, with implications for ecology and social systems.
Contribution
It introduces the first analysis of fear effects in classical competition models, demonstrating novel dynamical phenomena and spatial heterogeneity impacts.
Findings
Fear can induce bi-stability between coexistence and exclusion.
Spatial heterogeneity in fear can alter competition outcomes.
Fear effects extend to ecological and sociopolitical contexts.
Abstract
Non-consumptive effects such as fear of depredation, can strongly influence predator-prey dynamics. These effects have not been as well studied in the case of purely competitive systems, despite ecological and social motivations for the same. In this work we consider the classic two species ODE and PDE Lokta-Volterra competition models, where \emph{one} of the competitors is "fearful" of the other. We find that the presence of fear can have several interesting dynamical effects on the classical scenarios of weak and strong competition, and competitive exclusion. Notably, for fear levels in certain regimes, we show bi-stability between interior equilibrium and boundary equilibrium is possible - contrary to the classical strong competition situation where bi-stability is only possible between boundary equilibrium. Furthermore, in the spatially explicit setting, the effects of several…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
