Conventional preytaxis systems assume that prey-tactic velocity is proportional to the prey density gradient. However, many experiments exploring the predator–prey interactions show that it is the predator’s acceleration instead of velocity that is proportional to the prey density gradient in the prey-tactic movement, which we call preytaxis with prey-induced acceleration. Mathematical models of preytaxis with prey-induced acceleration were proposed by Arditi et al. ((2001) Theor. Popul. Biol. 59(3), 207–221) and Sapoukhina et al. ((2003) Am. Nat. 162(1), 61–76) to interpret the spatial heterogeneity of predators and prey observed in experiments. This paper is devoted to exploring the qualitative behaviour of such preytaxis systems with prey-induced acceleration and establishing the global existence of classical solutions with uniform-in-time bounds in all spatial dimensions. Moreover, we prove the global stability of spatially homogeneous prey-only and coexistence steady states with decay rates under certain conditions on system parameters. For the parameters outside the stability regime, we perform linear stability analysis to find the possible patterning regimes and use numerical simulations to demonstrate that spatially inhomogeneous time-periodic patterns will typically arise from the preytaxis system with prey-induced acceleration. Noticing that conventional preytaxis systems are unable to produce spatial patterns, our results imply that the preytaxis with prey-induced acceleration is indeed more appropriate than conventional preytaxis to interpret the spatial heterogeneity resulting from predator–prey interactions.

In this paper, we consider reaction-diffusion epidemic models with mass action or standard incidence mechanism and study the impact of limiting population movement on disease transmissions. We set either the dispersal rate of the susceptible or infected people to zero and study the corresponding degenerate reaction-diffusion model. Our main approach to study the global dynamics of these models is to construct delicate Lyapunov functions. Our results show that the consequences of limiting the movement of susceptible or infected people depend on transmission mechanisms, model parameters and population size.

We examine several extensions to the basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model, which are able to induce recurrent outbreaks (the basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model by itself does not exhibit recurrent outbreaks). We first analyse how slow seasonal variations can destabilise the endemic equilibrium, leading to recurrent outbreaks. In the limit of slow immunity loss, we derive asymptotic thresholds that characterise this transition. In the outbreak regime, we use asymptotic matching to obtain a two-dimensional discrete map which describes outbreak times and strength. We then analyse the resulting map using linear stability and numerics. As the frequency of forcing is increased, the map exhibits a period-doubling route to chaos which alternates with periodic outbreaks of increasing frequency. Other extensions that can lead to recurrent outbreaks include the addition of noise, state-dependent variation and fine-graining of model classes.

This article is devoted to the analysis of the parabolic–parabolic chemotaxis system with multi-components over $\mathbb{R}^2$. The optimal small initial condition on the global existence of solutions for multi-species chemotaxis model in the fully parabolic situation had not been attained as far as the author knows. In this paper, we prove that under the sub-critical mass condition, any solutions to conflict-free system exist globally. Moreover, the global existence of solutions to system with strong self-repelling effect has been discussed even for large initial data. The proof is based on the modified free energy functional and the Moser–Trudinger inequality for system.

Cannibalism is often an extreme interaction in the animal species to quell competition for limited resources. To model this critical factor, we improve the predator–prey model with nonlocal competition effect by incorporating the cannibalism term, and different kernels for competition are considered in this model numerically. We give the critical conditions leading to the double Hopf bifurcation, in which the gestation time delay and the diffusion coefficient were selected as the bifurcation parameters. The innovation of the work lies near the double Hopf bifurcation point, and the stable homogeneous and inhomogeneous periodic solutions can coexist. The theoretical results of the extended centre manifold reduction and normal form method are in good agreement with the numerical simulation.