Population dynamic consequences of fearful prey in a spatiotemporal predator-prey system (Q2160577)

The authors formulate a spatial predator-prey model considering the effect of fear which evokes various different responses concerning the physiology, morphology, ontogeny and the behavior of scared organisms. In this work, the authors incorporate this phenomenon in their Leslie-Gower type predator-prey model model by introducing the cost of fear in the prey reproduction term. The main focus is on studying the influence of anti-predator behaviours due to fear of predators in both space and time. The global dynamics of the temporal model is described first. Then Turing instability, the existence of Hopf bifurcation, direction and stability of bifurcating periodic solutions are determined for the spatially explicit model system. Conditions for Turing pattern formation are obtained through diffusion-driven instability. Numerical experiments are provided for both the temporal and the spatiotemporal model system, several Turing patterns are presented suggesting that the change in the level of fear and diffusion coefficients alter these structures significantly. The authors find that the increase in fear level can decrease the population size of both species.