Consequences of fear effect and prey refuge on the Turing patterns in a delayed predator–prey system

Abstract

This study presents a qualitative analysis of a modified Leslie–Gower prey–predator model with fear effect and prey refuge in the presence of diffusion and time delay. For the non-delayed temporal system, we examined the dissipativeness and persistence of the solutions. The existence of equilibria and stability analysis is performed to comprehend the complex behavior of the proposed model. Bifurcation of codimension-1, such as Hopf-bifurcation and saddle-node, is investigated. In addition, it is observed that increasing the strength of fear may induce periodic oscillations, and a higher value of fear may lead to the extinction of prey species. The system shows a bistability attribute involving two stable equilibria. The impact of providing spatial refuge to the prey population is also examined. We noticed that prey refuge benefits both species up to a specific threshold value beyond which it turns detrimental to predator species. For the non-spatial delayed system, the direction and stability of Hopf-bifurcation are investigated with the help of the center manifold theorem and normal form theory. We noticed that increasing the delay parameter may destabilize the system by producing periodic oscillations. For the spatiotemporal system, we derived the analytical conditions for Turing instability. We investigated the pattern dynamics driven by self-diffusion. The biological significance of various Turing patterns, such as cold spots, stripes, hot spots, and organic labyrinth, is examined. We analyzed the criterion for Hopf-bifurcation for the delayed spatiotemporal system. The impact of fear response delay on spatial patterns is investigated. Numerical simulations are illustrated to corroborate the analytical findings.