Existence and stability of steady-state bifurcations in a prey–predator system with a nonmonotonic functional response

A cross-diffusion prey–predator system exhibiting the prey group defense under homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions is studied. By considering the diffusive rate of the prey as a bifurcation parameter, we investigate sudden changes in the population dynamics of the prey and predator which can have a substantial effect on population size of the species. First a priori estimate for positive steady states is obtained. Next we prove the existence of a pitchfork bifurcation of positive steady states at a simple eigenvalue. The structure of the global steady-state bifurcation is discussed. We also investigate the stability of the trivial solution line and nontrivial steady-state solutions via the eigenvalue perturbation theory. To illustrate our theoretical results some numerical simulations are given. Numerical examples contain a supercritical and a subcritical pitchfork bifurcation.