The stabilizing role of cannibalism in a predator-prey system (Q1346429)

While working with large ecosystem models surprisingly unexpected dynamic effects have been observed. Increasing the cannibalism not only stabilizes the system and increases the prey population, but it also increases the predator population. We present a simple two-species model where a predator species feeds mainly on a prey species but also partly on itself. The model demonstrates the mechanisms leading to the counter intuitive result which was observed but not understood in the complex ERSEM model [see \textit{J. Baretta} et al., ERSEM. Neth. J. Sea Res. Preprint (1994)]. The model is an ODE-model. Modified Lotka-Volterra equations are used. The modifications consist of two types of additional nonlinearities.