Stability and Hopf Bifurcation in a Three Species Food Chain System With Harvesting and Two Delays

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of a delayed food chain system with harvesting. Sufficient conditions for the local stability of the positive equilibrium and for the existence of Hopf bifurcation are obtained by analyzing the associated characteristic equation. Formulas for determining the direction of Hopf bifurcation and the stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions are derived by applying the normal form method and center manifold theorem. Finally, numerical simulation results are presented to validate the theoretical analysis.