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The analysis of dynamical complexity in nonlinear phenomena is an effective tool to quantify the level of their structural disorder. In particular, a mathematical model of tumor-immune interactions can provide insight into cancer biology. Here, we present and explore the aspects of dynamical complexity, exhibited by a time-delayed tumor-immune model that describes the proliferation and survival of tumor cells under immune surveillance, governed by activated immune-effector cells, host cells, and concentrated interleukin-2. We show that by employing bifurcation analyses in different parametric regimes and the 0–1 test for chaoticity, the onset of chaos in the system can be predicted and also manifested by the emergence of multi-periodicity. This is further verified by studying one- and two-parameter bifurcation diagrams for different dynamical regimes of the system. Furthermore, we quantify the asymptotic behavior of the system by means of weighted recurrence entropy. This helps us to identify a resemblance between its dynamics and emergence of complexity. We find that the complexity in the model might indicate the phenomena of long-term cancer relapse, which provides evidence that incorporating time-delay in the effect of interleukin in the tumor model enhances remarkably the dynamical complexity of the tumor-immune interplay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an e-epidemic Susceptible–Infected–Vaccinated ( S I V ) model has been proposed to analyze the effect of node immunization and worms attacking dynamics in wireless sensor network. A modified nonlinear incidence rate with cyrtoid type functional response has been considered using sleep and active mode approach. Detailed stability analysis and the sufficient criteria for the persistence of the model system have been established. We also established different types of bifurcation analysis for different equilibria at different critical points of the control parameters. We performed a detailed Hopf bifurcation analysis and determine the direction and stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions using center manifold theorem. Numerical simulations are carried out to confirm the theoretical results. The impact of the control parameters on the dynamics of the model system has been investigated and malicious chaotic signals are detected. Finally, we have analyzed the effect of time delay on the dynamics of the model system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harvested populations fluctuate because of two primary reasons: the inherent nonlinearity contained in the interactions among the constituent species and the forces of harvesting acting on the oscillatory dynamics resulting from species interactions. During the course of these fluctuations, population densities make excursions to low densities. When the ecological system executes chaotic motion, extinction-sized densities are common. Thus, it is imperative to design harvesting strategies which aim at maximizing economic gains giving due consideration to the ecological health of the concerned ecological system. The present study was designed and performed to figure out how to set harvesting strategies which optimize the economic gain. The choice of optimal harvesting policy can be made only if dynamical features of the concerned ecological system are well understood. In this paper, we have consider the temporal and spatiotemporal interactions among phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish population with Holling type II and Holling type III functional responses. We have calculated stability analysis of the model system and performed the numerical simulations for both non-spatial and spatial models to figure out the parameters that are responsible for chaotic dynamics of the model system. The temporal model system shows rich dynamics including limit cycles and chaos whereas spatial model shows different types of patterns for population distribution. In this work, we have taken the case study of Sundarban wetland ecosystem. We have carried out the analysis of maximum sustainable yield and identified the parameters that are responsible for good health of wetland ecosystem through numerical simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an eco-epidemiological model in which both species diffuse along a spatial gradient has been shown to exhibit temporal chaos at a fixed point in space. The proposed model is a modification of the model recently presented by Upadhyay and Roy [2014]. The spatial interactions among the species have been represented in the form of reaction-diffusion equations. The model incorporates the intrinsic growth rate of fish population which varies linearly with the depth of water. Numerical results show that diffusion can drive otherwise stable system into aperiodic behavior with sensitivity to initial conditions. We show that spatially induced chaos plays an important role in spatial pattern formation in heterogeneous environment. Spatiotemporal distributions of species have been simulated using the diffusivity assumptions realistic for natural eco-epidemic systems. We found that in heterogeneous environment, the temporal dynamics of both the species are drastically different and show chaotic behavior. It was also found that the instability observed in the model is due to spatial heterogeneity and diffusion-driven. Cumulative death rate of predator has an appreciable effect on model dynamics as the spatial distribution of all constituent populations exhibit significant changes when this model parameter is changed and it acts as a regularizing factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predator-prey communities are building blocks of an ecosystem. Feeding rates reflect interference between predators in several situations, e.g. when predators form a dense colony or perform collective motion in a school, encounter prey in a region of limited size, etc. We perform spatio-temporal dynamics and pattern formation in a model aquatic system in both homogeneous and heterogeneous environments. Zooplanktons are predated by fishes and interfere with individuals of their own community. Numerical simulations are carried out to explore Turing and non-Turing spatial patterns. We also examine the effect of spatial heterogeneity on the spatio-temporal dynamics of the phytoplankton-zooplankton system. The phytoplankton specific growth rate is assumed to be a linear function of the depth of the water body. It is found that the spatio-temporal dynamics of an aquatic system is governed by three important factors: (i) intensity of interference between the zooplankton, (ii) rate of fish predation and (iii) the spatial heterogeneity. In an homogeneous environment, the temporal dynamics of prey and predator species are drastically different. While prey species density evolves chaotically, predator densities execute a regular motion irrespective of the intensity of fish predation. When the spatial heterogeneity is included, the two species oscillate in unison. It has been found that the instability observed in the model aquatic system is diffusion driven and fish predation acts as a regularizing factor. We also observed that spatial heterogeneity stabilizes the system. The idea contained in the paper provides a better understanding of the pattern formation in aquatic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A model food chain involving a specialist and a generalist predator is proposed and studied. One of the salient features of this model food chain is that it combines both the schemes (Volterra and Leslie) of modeling predator–prey interaction in one system in such a way that the demerits of these individual formulations are suppressed and the resulting model system represents a common unit of real world food webs. The stability analysis of the proposed model is carried out. The Hopf bifurcation conditions of the positive equilibrium point are established. Our numerical computations show that chaotic dynamics is sensitive to changes in values of parameters measuring attributes of either interacting populations or their environments. Two dimensional parameter scans suggest that the model food chain displays short-term recurrent chaos. This can be regarded as a plausible explanation for why it has been so difficult to detect deterministic chaos in natural populations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We examine and assess deterministic chaos as an observable. First, we present the development of model ecological systems. We illustrate how to apply the Kolmogorov theorem to obtain limits on the parameters in the system, which assure the existence of either stable equilibrium point or stable limit cycle behavior in the phase space of two-dimensional (2D) dynamical systems. We also illustrate the method of deriving conditions using the linear stability analysis. We apply these procedures on some basic existing model ecological systems. Then, we propose four model ecological systems to study the dynamical chaos (chaos and intermittent chaos) and cycles. Dynamics of two predation and two competition models have been explored. The predation models have been designed by linking two predator–prey communities, which differ from one another in one essential way: the predator in the first is specialist and that in the second is generalist. The two competition models pertain to two distinct competition processes: interference and exploitative competition. The first competition model was designed by linking two predator–prey communities through inter-specific competition. The other competition model assumes that a cycling predator–prey community is successfully invaded by a predator with linear functional response and coexists with the community as a result of differences in the functional responses of the two predators. The main criterion behind the selection of these two model systems for the present study was that they represent diversity of ecological interactions in the real world in a manner which preserves mathematical tractability. For investigating the dynamic behavior of the model systems, the following tools are used: (i) calculation of the basin boundary structures, (ii) performing two-dimensional parameter scans using two of the parameters in the system as base variables, (iii) drawing the bifurcation diagrams, and (iv) performing time series analysis and drawing the phase space diagrams. The results of numerical simulation are used to distinguish between chaotic and cyclic behaviors of the systems. The conclusion that we obtain from the first two model systems (predation models) is that it would be difficult to capture chaos in the wild because ecological systems appear to change their attractors in response to changes in the system parameters quite frequently. The detection of chaos in the real data does not seem to be a possibility as what is present in ecological systems is not robust chaos but short-term recurrent chaos. The first competition model (interference competition) shares this conclusion with those of predation ones. The model with exploitative competition suggests that deterministic chaos may be robust in certain systems, but it would not be observed as the constituent populations frequently execute excursions to extinction-sized densities. Thus, no matter how good the data characteristics and analysis techniques are, dynamical chaos may continue to elude ecologists. On the other hand, the models suggest that the observation of cyclical dynamics in nature is the most likely outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We present a new ecological model, which displays “edge of chaos” (EoC) in parameter space. This suggests that ecological systems are not chaotic, instead, their dynamics can be characterized as short-term recurrent chaos. The system’s dynamics is unpredictable and admits bursts of short-term predictability. We also provide results, which suggest that fully developed chaos will rarely be observed in natural systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We study the dynamical complexity of five non-linear deterministic predator–prey model systems. These simple systems were selected to represent a diversity of trophic structures and ecological interactions in the real world while still preserving reasonable tractability. We find that these systems can dramatically change attractor types, and the switching among different attractors is dependent on system parameters. While dynamical complexity depends on the nature (e.g., inter-specific competition versus predation) and degree (e.g., number of interacting components) of trophic structure present in the system, these systems all evolve principally on intrinsically noisy limit cycles. Our results support the common observation of cycling and rare observation of chaos in natural populations. Our study also allows us to speculate on the functional role of specialist versus generalist predators in food web modeling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]