Virus replication factor may be a controlling agent for obtaining disease-free system in a multi-species eco-epidemiological system

Abstract

The role of viruses in marine phytoplankton-zooplankton community structure is undoubtedly very important. In this paper, we propose a simple mathematical model for phytoplankton-zooplankton (prey-predator) system with an additional factor that the viral disease is spreading only among the prey species. Considering high abundance and importance of viruses in aquatic environments we have explicitly considered here the growth equation of free viruses and have studied this four-dimensional model analytically. It is observed that the disease-free system can be obtained when the virus replication factor lies in-between certain critical values. Numerical simulations have also been performed to substantiate the analytical findings.