Bifurcation in dynamic problems with seasonal succession

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how seasonal changes influence the stability and bifurcation structure of biological population models, identifying critical thresholds where populations go extinct or coexistence emerges.

Contribution

It applies bifurcation theory to non-autonomous seasonal models, establishing critical thresholds and analyzing primary and secondary bifurcations both analytically and numerically.

Findings

Existence of a critical season length $ au^*$ causing bifurcation from extinction.

Seasonality induces transitions between extinction and coexistence.

Analytical validation of bifurcations in specific models.

Abstract

We investigate the bifurcation structure of equilibria in a class of non-autonomous ordinary differential equations governed by a season length parameter, $\tau$, which determines the alternation between growth and decline dynamics. This structure models biological systems exhibiting seasonal variation, such as insect population dynamics or infectious disease transmission. Using the Crandall-Rabinowitz bifurcation theorem, we establish the existence of a critical threshold $\tau^*$ at which a bifurcation from the extinction equilibrium occurs. We also explore the emergence of secondary bifurcations from, in general, explicitly unknown non-trivial equilibria which can only be treated numerically. Our results are illustrated with a two-species competitive Lotka-Volterra model for the growth season and a Malthusian model for the decline season for which primary and secondary bifurcations may be computed analytically, allowing the validation of numerical approximations. Our analysis shows how seasonality drives transitions between extinction of both populations, of only one, and coexistence of both populations.