Stability and Hopf Bifurcation of a Delayed Mutualistic System.

In this paper, we study a classic mutualistic relationship between the leaf cutter ants and their fungus garden, establishing a time delay mutualistic system with stage structure. We investigate the stability and Hopf bifurcation by analyzing the distribution of the roots of the associated characteristic equation. By means of the center manifold theory and normal form method, explicit formulae are derived to determine the stability, direction and other properties of bifurcating periodic solutions. Finally, some numerical simulations are carried out for illustrating the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]