Figure 2. Stabilizing effect of pathogen density-dependent growth in the outside-host environment.

Bifurcation diagrammes indicate mean densities and the minimum and maximum values in the population fluctuations of the pathogen and host after the initial transients in the simulations have been removed. a) Increasing the strength of density-dependence stabilizes the population dynamics at f_P = 4.2×10⁻⁵ (r_P = 0.06). b) For increasing pathogen growth rate population dynamics stabilize at r_P = 0.096 while host extinction occurs at r_P = 0.112. Used parameter values are shown in Table 2.