Analysis of three species models of mutualism in predator-prey and competitive systems (Q789352)

An interaction among several different species is mutualistic if the presence of each species enhances the per capita growth rate of the other. In this paper, the authors present two models of mutualism in which interactions among three species lead to mutualism between two of them. The first model is governed by the system \(u'=uh(u,x)\), \(x'=\alpha xg(u,x)-yp(u,x)\), \(y'=y(-s+cp(u,x))\), and the second one by \(u'=uh(u,x_ 1)\), x'\({}_ 1=\alpha x_ 1(g_ 1(u,x_ 1)-q_ 1(u,x_ 1,x_ 2))\), x'\({}_ 2=x_ 2(g_ 2(x_ 2)-q_ 2(x_ 1,x_ 2)).\) Under several assumptions which correspond to biological constraints they study the existence of equilibria and their local stability and discuss the existence of periodic solutions surrounding the equilibria. Also some interesting special cases of the two systems are examined in details, while an informed nice discussion for several situations of the two models completes the paper.