Kar, RaktimBiswas, SantoshPal, Amit KumarNieto Roig, Juan José2026-04-172026-04-172026-02-24Kar, R., Biswas, S., Pal, A. K., & Nieto, J. J. (2026). Effect of fear and refuge in eco-epidemiological model with predator supported by additional food. Nonlinear Dynamics, 114(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-025-12124-w0924-090Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/10347/46777We propose a three-compartment eco-epidemiological model in which prey experience fear from susceptible predators and may seek refuge, predator follows a modified Leslie–Gower growth. The predator population is divided into susceptible and infected class, with disease transmission occurring horizontally together with saturated treatment of infected class. We analyze positivity and boundedness, compute biologically feasible equilibria, and derive the basic reproduction number (R0) along with conditions for local and global stability. Sensitivity is explored by partial rank correlation coefficient (PRCC) method; bifurcation behaviours are illustrated analytically and numerically. Furthermore, we formulate and numerically solve an optimal control problem aimed at minimizing infected predator biomass and treatment cost using the forward–backward sweep method. The results reveal that larger refuge size and stronger treatment efforts effectively reduce infection prevalence, while fear on prey species control by the refuge. Additionally, the system exhibits parameter-dependent bi-stability and multi-stability, as demonstrated through bifurcation diagrams.engThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitteduse,youwillneedtoobtainpermissiondirectlyfromthecopyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecomm ons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Applied EcologyCommunity and Population EcologyEcological ModellingEcological EpidemiologyRestoration EcologyTheoretical and Statistical EcologyMathematical Modeling of Infectious Disease Dynamicsjournal article10.1007/s11071-025-12124-w1573-269Xopen access