Bifurcation Analysis of a Chemostat Model with a Distributed Delay

A chemostat model of a single species feeding on a limiting nutrient supplied at a constant rate is proposed. The model incorporates a general nutrient uptake function and a distributed delay. The delay indicates that the growth of the species depends on the past concentration of nutrient. Using the average time delay as a bifurcation parameter, it is proven that the model undergoes a sequence of Hopf bifurcations. Stability criteria for the …