Synchronization and bursting activity in the model for two predator-prey systems coupled by predator migration

The papers is devoted to a model for two non-identical predator-prey communities coupled by migration and characterized by logistic growth of prey and Holling type II functional response. The coupling is a predator migration at constant weak rate. The non-identity is the difference in the prey growth rates or predator mortalities in each patch. We studied the equilibrium states of model and scenarios of loss of their stability and emerge of complex periodic solutions. It was shown that in some domains of the parameter space there is a bursting activity which are that the dynamics of two communities contain segments of slowly resting dynamic (as part of a fast-slow cycle or canard) and regular bursts of spikes. In the resting part, the dynamics of the second community, as a rule, follow the slow changes in the first community, i.e. the dynamics in different patches are synchronous. But in the fast part there is only phase synchronization between the fast-slow cycle in first patch and bursts in second. We classified the scenarios of transition between different types of bursting activity by location spiking manifold and canard. These types differ not so much in size, shape or numbers of spikes as in the order of bursts emerge relative a slow-fast cycle. In a typical case the start of burst (divergent fast oscillations) coincides with the minimum numbers or quasi-extinction of prey in the first patch. After a rapid increase in the prey number in the first patch, diverging fluctuations give way to damped in the second patch. Such dynamics correspond to the rhombus-wave shape of spikes cluster. Another case is interesting, when the burst of spikes is formed after the full recovery of prey and with a certain predator number in the first patch. In this case, the spikes cluster takes the shape of a triangle-wave or a truncated rhombus-wave. It was shown that transitions between these types of bursts are accompanied by a change in the oscillation period and the degree of synchronization. Triangular-wave bursters correspond to complete synchronization of the predator dynamics in the resting part and rhomboid-wave correspond to antiphase synchronization. In the fast part with many spikes, communities are completely asynchronous to each other.