  In the present article, we demonstrate the emergence and existence of the
spiral wave chimera-like transient pattern in coupled ecological systems,
composed of prey-predator patches, where the patches are connected in a
three-dimensional medium through local diffusion. We explore the transition
scenarios among the several collective dynamical behaviors together with
transient spiral wave chimera-like states and investigate the long time
behavior of these states. The transition from the transient spiral chimera-like
pattern to the long time synchronized or desynchronized pattern appears through
the deformation of the incoherent region of the spiral core. We discuss the
transient dynamics under the influence of the species diffusion at different
time instants. By calculating the instantaneous strength of incoherence of the
populations, we estimate the duration of the transient dynamics characterized
by the persistence of the chimera-like spatial coexistence of coherent and
incoherent patterns over the spatial domain. We generalize our observations on
the transient dynamics in three-dimensional grid of diffusive ecological
systems by considering two different prey-predator systems.
