A predator-prey model with genetic differentiation both in the predator and prey (Q2050052)

The paper treats a particular case of a predator-prey 4-dimensional ODE model that has been treated in [\textit{L. Castellino} et al., in: AIP Conference Proceedings 1776, 020006 (2016), \url{https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4965312}]. The model in the 2016 paper is of the Lotka-Volterra type (but with carrying capacities on the prey) with both predator and prey having two genotypes. The particular case treated here consists in assuming that the hunting ability of each predator genotype does not depend on the prey genotype and allows this paper to go deeper than the previous paper into the qualitative behaviour of the (simpler) model. The study of the model is performed on an a dimensionalized version. The paper starts by studying the stability of the model in the absence of predators and then reminds the known stability results of the model with just one genotype for both preys and predators. The full model is then studied. There are two boundary equilibria. One corresponds to the extinction of both species and is unstable. The other corresponds to the extinction of just the predators and, depending on the value of a parameter \(h\) compared to some critical value \(h_c\), is unstable for \(h<h_c\), globally stable for \(h>h_c\) or has a local centre manifold characterized in the paper for \(h=h_c\). A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a unique positive equilibrium of the full model is that \(h<h_c\) and this equilibrium is stable. Thus, the model has a transcritical bifurcation. The paper concludes with numerical examples and corresponding figures illustrating its different possible qualitative behaviours.