Dynamics of a discrete one‐predator two‐prey system with Michaelis–Menten‐type prey harvesting and prey refuge

In this paper, we propose and study a discretized one‐predator two‐prey system along with prey refuge and Michaelis–Menten‐type prey harvesting. The interaction among the species is considered as Holling type III functional response. Firstly, existence and local stability of all the fixed points are derived under certain parametric conditions. Furthermore, a special consideration is made to global asymptotic stability of the interior fixed point. Then, we have shown that the system undergoes different types of bifurcations including transcritical bifurcation, flip bifurcation, and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation by using center manifold theorem, bifurcation theory, and normal form method. Also, Feigenbaum's constant of the system is calculated. It is observed that both harvesting and refuge have a stabilizing effect on the system, and the stabilizing effect of harvesting dominates the stabilizing effect of refuge. Of most interest is the finding of coexisting attractors and multistability. In particular, optimal harvesting policy has been obtained by extension of Pontryagin's maximum principle to discrete system. Finally, some intriguing numerical simulations are provided to verify our analytic findings and rich dynamics of the three species system.