LAUSR

Abstract Plants send signals through releasing Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), to attract beneficial natural carnivorous insects as reinforcement against harmful herbivorous insects which are responsible for hampering the growth of plants. In this work, we explore the dynamical behavior of a volatile mediated plant-herbivore-carnivore system with fractional order differential equations. Basic results on the existence, uniqueness, non-negativity and boundedness of the solutions, local and global stability of coexistence equilibrium points and limit cycles emerging through Hopf bifurcation are investigated. Stability behavior around coexistence equilibrium point changes with varying fractional order (α). Also the existence of Hopf bifurcation is established by considering the fractional order α as a bifurcation parameter. Moreover, the attraction factor of plant volatile to carnivore and predation rate for plant-herbivore are responsible for changing the system dynamics. Numerical simulations using matlab software are performed to support the analytical findings.