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Bifurcation Analysis Of Two Biological Systems: A Tritrophic Food Chain Model And An Oscillating Networks Model, Xiangyu Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, we apply bifurcation theory to study two biological systems. Main attention is focused on complex dynamical behaviors such as stability and bifurcation of limit cycles. Hopf bifurcation is particularly considered to show bistable or even tristable phenomenon which may occur in biological systems. Recurrence is also investigated to show that such complex behavior is common in biological systems.

First we consider a tritrophic food chain model with Holling functional response types III and IV for the predator and superpredator, respectively. Main attention is focused on the sta- bility and bifurcation of equilibria when the prey has a …