title: Food chain chaos due to junction-fold point.
abstract: Consideration is given to a basic food chain model satisfying the trophic time diversification hypothesis which translates the model into a singularly perturbed system of three time scales. It is demonstrated that in some realistic system parameter region, the model has a unimodal or logistic-like Poincare return map when the singular parameter for the fastest variable is at the limiting value 0. It is also demonstrated that the unimodal map goes through a sequence of period-doubling bifurcations to chaos. The mechanism for the creation of the unimodal criticality is due to the existence of a junction-fold point [B. Deng, J. Math. Biol. 38, 21-78 (1999)]. The fact that junction-fold points are structurally stable and the limiting structures persist gives us a rigorous but dynamical explanation as to why basic food chain dynamics can be chaotic. (c) 2001 American Institute of Physics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Math and Statistics, University of Nebraska, 810 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0323.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Deng