In a tripartite system comprising a Λ-atom interacting with two radiation fields in the presence of field nonlinearities and an intensity-dependent field-atom coupling, striking features have been shown to occur in the dynamics of the mean photon number 〈Ni(t)〉 (i=1,2) corresponding to either field. In this Letter, we carry out a detailed time-series analysis and establish an interesting correlation between the short-time and long-time dynamics of 〈Ni(t)〉. Lyapunov exponents, return maps, recurrence plots, recurrence-time statistics, as well as the clustering coefficient and the transitivity of networks constructed from the time series, are studied as functions of the intensity parameter κ. These are shown to carry signatures of a special value κ=κ‾. Our work also exhibits how techniques from nonlinear dynamics help analyze the behavior of observables in multipartite quantum systems. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.