The role of inducible defence in ecological models: Effects of nonlocal intraspecific competitions

TL;DR

This paper models predator-prey dynamics incorporating inducible defenses, analyzing how nonlocal intraspecific competition influences stability, pattern formation, and species colonization potential.

Contribution

It introduces a predator-prey model with inducible defenses and nonlocal competition, revealing their effects on stability and pattern formation in ecological systems.

Findings

Inducible defense stabilizes predator-prey dynamics.

Nonlocal interactions expand Turing pattern domains.

Defense levels influence species colonization likelihood.

Abstract

Phenotypic plasticity is a key factor in driving the evolution of species in the predator-prey interaction. The natural environment is replete with phenotypic plasticity, which is the source of inducible defences against predators, including concealment, cave-dwelling, mimicry, evasion, and revenge. In this work, a predator-prey model is proposed where the prey species shows inducible defence against their predators. The dynamics produce a wide range of non-trivial and impactful results, including the stabilizing effect of the defence mechanism. The model is also analyzed in the presence of spatio-temporal diffusion in a bounded domain. It is found in the numerical simulation that the Turing domain shrinks with the increase of defence level. The work is extended further by introducing a nonlocal term in the intra-specific competition of the prey species. The Turing instability condition has been studied for the local model around the coexisting steady state, followed by the Turing and non-Turing patterns in the presence of the nonlocal interaction term. The work reveals how an increase in inducible defence reduces the Turing domain in the local interaction model but expands it when the range of nonlocal interactions is extended, suggesting a higher likelihood of species colonization.