Spatiotemporal pattern formation in a diffusive predator-prey system: an analytical approach

Abstract

In this paper, we propose and analyse a mathematical model to study the mathematical aspect of reaction diffusion pattern formation mechanism in a predator-prey system. An attempt is made to provide an analytical explanation for understanding plankton patchiness in a minimal model of aquatic ecosystem consisting of phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish and nutrient. The reaction diffusion model system exhibits spatiotemporal chaos causing plankton patchiness in marine system. Our analytical findings, supported by the results of numerical experiments, suggest that an unstable diffusive system can be made stable by increasing diffusivity constant to a sufficiently large value. It is also observed that the solution of the system converges to its equilibrium faster in the case of two-dimensional diffusion in comparison to the one-dimensional diffusion. The ideas contained in the present paper may provide a better understanding of the pattern formation in marine ecosystem.