Abstract
In this paper, we initiate the study of a discrete-time dynamical system modeling a trophic network connecting three types of plankton (phytoplankton, zooplankton, mixoplankton) and bacteria. The nonlinear operator V associated with this dynamical system is of type 4-Volterra quadratic stochastic operator with twelve parameters. We give conditions on the parameters under which this operator maps the five-dimensional standard simplex to itself and we find its fixed points. Moreover, we study the limit points of trajectories for this operator. For each situations we give some biological interpretations.