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Bistability is a fundamental property of nonlinear systems and is found in many applied and theoretical studies of biological systems (populations and communities). In the simplest case it is expressed in the coexistence of diametrically opposed alternative stable equilibrium states of the system, and which of them will be achieved depends on the initial conditions. Bistability in simple models can lead to quad-stability as models become more complex, for example, when adding genetic, age and spatial structure. This occurs in different models from completely different subject area and leads to very interesting, often counterintuitive conclusions. In this article, we review such situations. The paper deals with bifurcations leading to bi- and quad-stability in mathematical models of the following biological objects. The first one is the system of two populations coupled by migration and under the action of natural selection, in which all genetic diversity is associated with a single diallelic locus with a significant difference in fitness for homo- and heterozygotes. The second is the system of two limited populations described by the Bazykin model or the Ricker model and coupled by migration. The third is a population with two age stages and density-dependent regulation of birth rate which is determined either only by population density, or additionally depends on the genetic structure of adjacent generations. We found that all these models have similar scenarios for the birth of equilibrium states that correspond to the formation of spatiotemporal inhomogeneity or to the differentiation by phenotypes of individuals from different age stages. Such inhomogeneity is a consequence of local bistability and appears as a result of a combination of pitchfork bifurcation (period doubling) and saddle-node bifurcation.

The review and systematization of current papers on the mathematical modeling of population dynamics allow us to conclude the key interests of authors are two or three main research lines related to the description and analysis of the dynamics of both local structured populations and systems of interacting homogeneous populations as ecological community in physical space. The paper reviews and systematizes scientific studies and results obtained within the framework of dynamics of structured and interacting populations to date. The paper describes the scientific idea progress in the direction of complicating models from the classical Malthus model to the modern models with various factors affecting population dynamics in the issues dealing with modeling the local population size dynamics. In particular, they consider the dynamic effects that arise as a result of taking into account the environmental capacity, density-dependent regulation, the Allee effect, complexity of an age and a stage structures. Particular attention is paid to the multistability of population dynamics. In addition, studies analyzing harvest effect on structured population dynamics and an appearance of the hydra effect are presented. The studies dealing with an appearance and development of spatial dissipative structures in both spatially separated populations and communities with migrations are discussed. Here, special attention is also paid to the frequency and phase multistability of population dynamics, as well as to an appearance of spatial clusters. During the systematization and review of articles on modeling the interacting population dynamics, the focus is on the “prey–predator” community. The key idea and approaches used in current mathematical biology to model a “prey–predator” system with community structure and harvesting are presented. The problems of an appearance and stability of the mosaic structure in communities distributed spatially and coupled by migration are also briefly discussed.

This paper focuses on the problem of modeling and analyzing dynamic regimes, both regular and chaotic, in systems of coupled populations in the presence of random disturbances. The discrete Ricker model is used as the initial deterministic population model. The paper examines the dynamics of two populations coupled by migration. Migration is proportional to the difference between the densities of two populations with a coupling coefficient responsible for the strength of the migration flow. Isolated population subsystems, modeled by the Ricker map, exhibit various dynamic modes, including equilibrium, periodic, and chaotic ones. In this study, the coupling coefficient is treated as a bifurcation parameter and the parameters of natural population growth rate remain fixed. Under these conditions, one subsystem is in the equilibrium mode, while the other exhibits chaotic behavior. The coupling of two populations through migration creates new dynamic regimes, which were not observed in the isolated model. This article aims to analyze the dynamics of corporate systems with variations in the flow intensity between population subsystems. The article presents a bifurcation analysis of the attractors in a deterministic model of two coupled populations, identifies zones of monostability and bistability, and gives examples of regular and chaotic attractors. The main focus of the work is in comparing the stability of dynamic regimes against random disturbances in the migration intensity. Noise-induced transitions from a periodic attractor to a chaotic attractor are identified and described using direct numerical simulation methods. The Lyapunov exponents are used to analyze stochastic phenomena. It has been shown that in this model, there is a region of change in the bifurcation parameter in which, even with an increase in the intensity of random perturbations, there is no transition from order to chaos. For the analytical study of noise-induced transitions, the stochastic sensitivity function technique and the confidence domain method are used. The paper demonstrates how this mathematical tool can be employed to predict the critical noise intensity that causes a periodic regime to transform into a chaotic one.