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Salton Sea (a destination resort) is to be saved from being converted into a skeleton-filled wasteland. The critical amount of water flowing into the sea to maintain its level and salinity has been diverted since January 2018. This will lead to shrinking volumes and increasing salinities. Ecological consequences and public health impacts of altered conditions will be phenomenal. We design and analyze a minimal eco-epidemiological model to figure out future journey of this sea; a way station for fish-eating migratory birds. The mathematical model has been assembled in terms of prey-predator interaction. The salient feature of the proposed model is its seasonally varying contact rate which represents rate of conversion of susceptible fishes into infectives. We have analytically investigated the global stability, disease persistence and periodic solutions of the proposed model system. Susceptible prey-induced periodic solution is globally asymptotically stable when R ̄ 0 1 < 1 , otherwise unstable and hence disease persists for R ̄ 0 1 > 1. Global stability and Hopf bifurcation (HB) analysis help us extract parameter values to explore the dynamical behavior of the model system. Two-dimensional parameter scans and bifurcation diagrams reveal that the model displays propensity towards chaotic dynamics, which is associated with extinction-sized population densities. In the presence of stochastic external forces, this implies extinction of most of the fish species. This, in turn, suggests that resident birds will have to migrate to other destinations. The fish-eating migratory birds will be forced to switch over to invertebrates. Ecological consequences and public health impacts of this transition would be severe. Conservation groups are solicited to draw attention of the government to avert this impounding danger. It is important to plan for an ecosystem-wide transition such that impacts on birds and on human inhabitants living adjacent to the shrinking and salinizing sea are minimized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In earlier literature, a version of a classical three-species food chain model, with modified Holling type IV functional response, is proposed. Results on the global boundedness of solutions to the model system under certain parametric restrictions are derived, and chaotic dynamics is shown. We prove that in fact the model possesses explosive instability, and solutions can explode/blow up in finite time, for certain initial conditions, even under the parametric restrictions of the literature. Furthermore, we derive the Hopf bifurcation criterion, route to chaos, and Turing bifurcation in case of the spatially explicit model. Lastly, we propose, analyze, and simulate a version of the model, incorporating gestation effect, via an appropriate time delay. The delayed model is shown to possess globally bounded solutions, for any initial condition. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [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, the complex dynamics of a spatial aquatic system in the presence of self- and cross-diffusion are investigated. Criteria for local stability, instability and global stability are obtained. The effect of critical wavelength which can drive a system to instability is investigated. We noticed that cross-diffusion coefficient can be quite significant, even for small values of off-diagonal terms in the diffusion matrix. With the help of numerical simulation, we observed the Turing patterns (spots, strips, spot-strips mixture), regular spiral patterns and irregular patchy structures. The beauty and complexity of the Turing patterns are attributed to a large variety of symmetry properties realized by different values of predator's immunity, rate of fish predation and half saturation constant of predator population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the present paper is to consider the dynamical analysis of a three dimensional prey-predator model within deterministic environment and the influence of environmental driving forces on the dynamics of the model system. For the deterministic model we have obtained the local asymptotic stability criteria of various equilibrium points and derived the condition for the existence of small amplitude periodic solution bifurcating from interior equilibrium point through Hopf bifurcation. We have obtained the parametric domain within which the model system exhibit chaotic oscillation and determined the route to chaos. Finally, we have shown that chaotic oscillation disappears in presence of environmental driving forces which actually affect the deterministic growth rates. These driving forces are unable to drive the system from a regime of deterministic chaos towards a stochastically stable situation. The stochastic stability results are discussed in terms of the stability of first and second order moments. Exhaustive numerical simulations are carried out to validate the analytical findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, is an epidemic caused by H5N1 virus that primarily affects birds like chickens, wild water birds, etc. On rare occasions, these can infect other species including pigs and humans. In the span of less than a year, the lethal strain of bird flu is spreading very fast across the globe mainly in South East Asia, parts of Central Asia, Africa and Europe. In order to study the patterns of spread of epidemic, we made an investigation of outbreaks of the epidemic in one week, that is from February 13–18, 2006, when the deadly virus surfaced in India. We have designed a statistical transmission model of bird flu taking into account the factors that affect the epidemic transmission such as source of infection, social and natural factors and various control measures are suggested. For modeling the general intensity coefficient , we have implemented the recent ideas given in the article Fitting the Bill, Nature [R. Howlett, Fitting the bill, Nature 439 (2006) 402], which describes the geographical spread of epidemics due to transportation of poultry products. Our aim is to study the spread of avian influenza, both in time and space, to gain a better understanding of transmission mechanism. Our model yields satisfactory results as evidenced by the simulations and may be used for the prediction of future situations of epidemic for longer periods. We utilize real data at these various scales and our model allows one to generalize our predictions and make better suggestions for the control of this epidemic. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the complex and competitive world of oceans, different size of plants and animals exist. All of them compete for the limited resources; e.g., nutrients, sunlight, minerals etc. Size-specific and intraspecific predation is common among zooplankton. We design a model food chain and explore dynamics, and patterns of species abundance in ocean. The proposed mathematical model is based on a parameter; exponent of closure, m. A value of m less than 1 represents both size-specific and intraspecific predation among zooplankton. The mathematical model has been extended to include random movements of all the constituent populations by adding Fickian diffusion. Eigenvalues and amplitude equations are used to figure out relevant parameter spaces for numerical exploration. An analysis of the spatial system in the neighborhood of a critical parameter is performed using amplitude equation. Choosing appropriate control parameter from the Turing space, existence conditions for stable patterns are derived. Equal density contours were plotted for all the constituents of the model food chain. Epidemiological significance of these spatial patterns is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]