Nonlinear Dynamical Behaviour in a Predator-Prey Model with Harvesting

Abstract

We investigate the stability and periodic orbits of a predator-prey model with harvesting. The model has a biologically-meaningful interior, an attractor undergoing damped oscillations, and can become destabilised to produce periodic orbits via a Hopf bifurcation. Some sufficient conditions for the existence of the Hopf bifurcation are established, and a stability analysis for the periodic solutions using a Lyapunov function is presented. Finally, some computer simulations illustrate our theoretical results.