Dynamics of a Predator–Prey Model with Distributed Delay to Represent the Conversion Process or Maturation

Distributed delay is included in a simple predator–prey model in the prey-to-predator biomass conversion term. The delayed term includes a delay-dependent “discount” factor that ensures the predators that do not survive the delay interval, do not contribute to growth of the predator population. A simple model was chosen so that without delay all solutions converge to a globally asymptotically stable equilibrium in order to show the possible effects of delay on the dynamics. If the co-existence equilibrium does not exist, the dynamics of the system is identical to its non-delayed analog. However, with delay, there is a delay-dependent threshold for the existence of the co-existence equilibrium. When the co-existence equilibrium exists, unlike the dynamics of the model without delay, a much wider range of dynamics is possible, including a strange attractor and bi-stability, although the system is uniformly persistent. A bifurcation theory approach is taken, using both the mean delay and the predator death rate as bifurcation parameters. We consider the gamma and the uniform distributions as delay kernels and show that the “discounting” term ensures that the Hopf bifurcations occur in pairs, as was observed in the analogous system with discrete delay (i.e., using the Dirac delta distribution). We show that there are certain features common to all distributions, although the model with different kernels can have a significantly different range of dynamics. In particular, the number of bi-stabilities, the sequence of bifurcations, the criticality of the Hopf bifurcations, and the size of the stability regions can differ. Also, the width of the interval over which the delay history is nonzero seems to have a significant effect on the range of dynamics. Thus, ignoring the delay and/or not choosing the right delay kernel might result in inaccurate modelling predictions.