Attractors and long transients in a spatio-temporal slow-fast Bazykin's model

Abstract: Spatio-temporal complexity of ecological dynamics has been a major focus of research for a few decades. Pattern formation, chaos, regime shifts and long transients are frequently observed in field data but specific factors and mechanisms responsible for the complex dynamics often remain obscure. An elementary building block of ecological population dynamics is a prey-predator system. In spite of its apparent simplicity, it has been demonstrated that a considerable part of ecological dynamical complexity may originate in this elementary system. A considerable progress in understanding of the prey-predator system's potential complexity has been made over the last few years; however, there are yet many questions remaining. In this paper, we focus on the effect of intraspecific competition in the predator population. In mathematical terms, such competition can be described by an additional quadratic term in the equation for the predator population, hence resulting in the variant of prey-predator system that is often referred to as Bazykin's model. We pay a particular attention to the case (often observed in real population communities) where the inherent prey and predator timescales are significantly different: the property known as a `slow-fast' dynamics. Using an array of analytical methods along with numerical simulations, we provide comprehensive investigation into the spatio-temporal dynamics of this system. In doing that, we apply a novel approach to quantify the system solution by calculating its norm in two different metrics such as $C^0$ and $L^2$. We show that the slow-fast Bazykin's system exhibits a rich spatio-temporal dynamics, including a variety of long exotic transient regimes that can last for hundreds and thousands of generations.