Indirect Mutualism and Coexistence in Multispecies Ecological Communities: A Mathematical Approach

In nature we find qualitatively different kinds of mutualistic systems. Two important factors which contribute to this diversity are: First, the mechanisms by which one species benefits the other and the second, the number of species that must interact in order. for there to be mutualism between two of them. In the second case, if the number of species is more than two, then the mutualism will be termed as Indirect mutualism. Thus the models, we shall consider in this paper will be at least three dimensional. We shall consider models dealing with facultative with a prey species, obligate with a predator species and see how a mutualist can modify competitive outcome of the interaction leading to coexistence in a system of competing species.